"Clumsily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before his work, it will seem trivial; yet taken with his work it is most important. In short, one could scarcely know what Shaw's doings meant unless one knew what he meant by them. This difficulty in mere order and construction has puzzled me very much. I am going to overcome it, clumsily perhaps, but in the way which affects me as most sincere. Before I write even a slight suggestion of his relation to the stage, I am going to write of three soils or atmospheres out of which that relation grew. In other words, before ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Clumsily, heavily, the old collie tried to respond, but of late he had been excused from acting; and he was ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... Indian, moving ponderously up the rough plank with a piece balanced upon his shoulders, missed his footing and fell with a loud splash into the water. The Indian scrambled clumsily ashore, and the piece was rescued, but not before a perfect torrent of French-English-Indian profanity had poured from the lips of the ever-versatile Vermilion. Harriet Penny shrank against ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... ankle to the calf, became inflamed, as red as blood, and painful. One day, when he had an attack of this complaint, the king, as he lay, wished to make a close inspection of the redness in his leg; as John was clumsily holding a lighted candle close to the king, a drop of hot grease fell on the bad leg; and the king, who had sat up on his bed, threw himself back, exclaiming, "Ah! John, John, my grandfather turned you out of his house for a less matter!" and the clumsiness of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and not a few trodden under foot. The empty trucks going west again made the longest trains, as they could be laden with nothing but a little wire-netting for settlers who were fighting the rabbits, and were easily distinguishable from other "goods," as when they clumsily and jerkily halted the clanking of their couplings and the bumping of their buffers could be heard for a mile or more down the valley. The splendid atmosphere intensified all sounds and carried them an unusual distance, and many a time at first I was wont to be aroused from sleep in the night ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... whole body came in sight. He advanced clumsily and ponderously towards the little party of flyers, walking erect, his plain intent being to kill them. His short legs were hardly strong enough, as sturdy as they were, to support his huge body. All at once he stopped to look at them. ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... to change the "one" to "five" on the "one" side of the new combined note, but it was done so clumsily that the fraud would have been seen at a glance, and the only hope of passing the notes as fives would have been to pass them over with the $5 side up and trust to the man receiving it not to turn it over before putting ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... stupefied, with his head full of some silly story related to his office, he crossed the Jardin des Plantes, and went to have a look at the bears, if he was not in too great a hurry. There he remained half an hour, leaning over the rails at the top of the pit, observing the animals clumsily swaying to and fro. The behaviour of these huge beasts pleased him. He examined them with gaping mouth and rounded eyes, partaking of the joy of an idiot when he perceived them bestir themselves. At last he turned homewards, dragging his feet along, busying ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... unvisited by civilization save as received through the medium of a few semi-barbarous travellers, may contain treasures which they are now unknown to possess; mines of copper, lead, and antimony, now clumsily worked, may be made to yield of their abundance; tracts of uncultivated lands be brought into rich cultivation, and efficient means of transport would carry their produce far and wide through the country. Katmandu itself would be on the high road for the costly trade of Chinese Tartary and Thibet ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... air, earth and water? There are four, only four, those nursing fathers of various beings! What a pity! Why are they not forty, four hundred, four thousand! How poor everything is, how mean and wretched! grudgingly given, dryly invented, clumsily made! Ah! the elephant and the hippopotamus, what grace! And the camel, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... are not the worst things of which one is most ashamed: there is not only deceit behind a mask—there is so much goodness in craft. I could imagine that a man with something costly and fragile to conceal, would roll through life clumsily and rotundly like an old, green, heavily-hooped wine-cask: the refinement of his shame requiring it to be so. A man who has depths in his shame meets his destiny and his delicate decisions upon paths which few ever reach, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... his eighth year, was placed at the academy for poor children, which Pestalozzi had previously instituted at Neuenhof, near Bern, Aargau; but, in the year 1778, we find, in the authentic account of that institution, published by the Economic Society of Bern, the following short and somewhat clumsily expressed notice:—"Friedly Mynth of Bossi (Mind of Pizy), of the bailliwick of Aubonne, resident in Worblaufen, very weak, incapable of hard work, full of talent for drawing, a strange creature, full of artist-caprices, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... my friend climbed around on to the ladder and commenced to descend. I waited until his head disappeared below the level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... However unwillingly and clumsily Ivan set about untying the knot, it had to come undone at last. Besides, the bystanders were beginning to grumble, and their muttering disturbed the reverie into which the young aide-de-camp had fallen. He raised his head, which had been sunk on his breast, and cast a ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... us grant as much. But obviously it suits his pride to assume that nothing can be done. To admit the contrary would be to admit that he was leaving something undone, that he had organized his existence clumsily, even that he had made a fundamental miscalculation in the arrangement of his career. He has confessed to grave dissatisfaction. It behoves him, for the sake of his own dignity and reputation, to be quite sure that the grave dissatisfaction ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... yellow feathers and black velvet. She was not pretty, but she had "an air," and that was supremest beauty in Andrew's eyes. Another was in lilac, another in pink. Each had the same sleek brown hair, the same ivory complexion. In attendance was a tall clumsily built but very imposing young man with sleepy blue eyes and a mighty mustache. The girls paid ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... matter how uncongenial, those garlands were sure to bloom. His zeal was such a hardy perennial that the most chilling reception could not damage its vitality. Principle and intention were both all right, of course, but they were clumsily carried out, and the whole effect was to remind one unpleasantly of the clockmaker puffing his wares. At the most unseasonable times and in the most incongruous places, Mr. Fullarton always had an eye to business, introducing ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Mexican's face was beaded with sweat as he rose and stared down at the wounded man. Clumsily he attempted to help Waring, who washed and bandaged the shattered shoulder. Waring had shot to kill, but the gun was not his own, and he had fired almost as it had touched ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... revealing a suite of beautiful rooms and a fine company of gentlefolks, men with powdered wigs and ladies with elegant toilettes, Maimon started back with a painful shock. An under-consciousness of mud-stained boots and a clumsily cut overcoat, mixed itself painfully with this impression of pretty, scented women, and the clatter of tongues and coffee-cups. He stood rooted to the threshold in a sudden bitter realization that the great world cared nothing about metaphysics. Ease, fine ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... in a black gown, a black shawl, and a bonnet and veil, precisely like the ones I had on! Her veil was drawn closely over her face, she wore black woollen gloves, and held in one hand a black reticule—which I would have declared was nurse's—and in the other a clumsily folded umbrella. As I sat and stared at the advancing figure, I wondered if I were dreaming, and actually gave myself a pinch to assure myself I was awake. But who could she be,—this double of mine? I wouldn't like to tell Jack or any of the others, you know, but I would really ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... hunched up, slouching, his legs crossed, his elbows seeking support against his body; he held his clumsily folded paper close to his eyes. He had the appearance of being very myopic, but ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... said Scattergood, hastily, and he climbed into his buggy clumsily, placing the baby on the seat beside him, and holding it in place with his ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... "The Butcher of Turin," and I had just time on the hint thus given me by Mrs. I. to pass a grateful eulogium on the distinguished statesman whom Mrs. Wilberforce, with all a sister's care, had rocked in his baby-cradle,—whom, but for my wife's long and short notes, I should have clumsily abused among the other statesmen of ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... ships were building, the rowers were trained on scaffolds placed upon the land like benches of ships at sea. We can not but feel astonished at the daring of the Romans, who, with ships thus hastily and clumsily built, and with crews imperfectly trained, sailed to attack the navy of the first maritime state in the world. This was in the fifth year of the war (B.C. 260). One of the Consuls, Cn. Cornelius, first ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... sharply with his beak, and again returned to listen near the entrance. But all his artifice was quite in vain; the voles would not bolt; they were not even inquisitive; so presently, baffled in his hopes of plunder, he moved clumsily away, stooped for an instant, and lifted himself on slow, sable pinions into ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... looking up from the letter which a pleasurable excitement caused to shake in his hand, wondered why any one should ever have charged this kindly matron with a cold lack of sympathy. So interested in his affairs was she, so responsive to a sentiment, though it might be clumsily spoken, so patient of his talk and of his silence, that to him she was the Roman mother whom he had met in making his way through a short-cut ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... without a syllable of discontent or grudging look or word: each, on receiving his share, coming up and giving the donor a brusque bow and thanks. They have learnt to overcharge already, and use extortion in dealing, as is the custom with the people of the plains; but it is clumsily done, and never accompanied with the grasping air and insufferable whine of the latter. They are constantly armed with a long, heavy, straight knife,* [It is called "Ban," and serves equally for plough, toothpick, table-knife, hatchet, hammer, and sword.] but never draw it on one another: family ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... button-hole, button, hem, gusset and stay in proper condition. These mending-shops should take on apprentices, who should be sent to the house to do every sort of repairing with a needle. I would open another school to train women to every kind of trivial service, now clumsily or inadequately performed by men. If, for instance, you now send to an upholsterer to have an old window-blind or blind fixture repaired, his apprentice will replace the entire thing, at a proportionate cost, leaving the old screw-holes to gape at the gazer. I would train ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... about, until, after they had been bereft of all their spirit, they were held to be nearer the professional singer's plane. But when people tried to follow Wagner's instructions to the letter, they proceeded so clumsily and timidly that they were not incapable of representing the midnight riot in the second act of the Meistersingers by a group of ballet-dancers. They seemed to do all this, however, in perfectly ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... lead lines of its own upper half. In short, you could have it so placed that you would like it no better, that it would be no better, than the bit of "builder's glazing" in the top quatrefoil of the next window, which looks like, and I fancy is, of almost the very same glass, but clumsily mixed, and, fortunately, dated ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... admonitory wirelesses!) He is suffering so hideously, and so determinedly, like a fakir. He feels he must speed the parting soul with the Scriptures and he reads terrifying things about weird beasts,—lion-mouthed leopards with feet like bears—and when he goes downstairs I try—very clumsily, M.D.—to tell Dan'l about the God you know, the one who goes with you into dark alleys and dark hearts. I wish you were ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... next morning, so Peter Masters bade Aymer good-bye that night. He apologised clumsily for taking Christopher away so soon after ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... the two men were struggling wildly. The man was strongly but clumsily built, and lacked the agility and muscular force of the young athlete. But Bob's victory did not come easily. Again and again the fellow renewed his attack, while the woman stood by with a look ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... sifting of dry dust below me, as I did wot, being very keen to hear, by reason of my fright. And immediately did those three monstrous men look upward, and did seem to me to stare into mine eyes, as I did lie there hid amid the moss-bushes. And I was so put in fear that I did clumsily, and sent another siftering of dust downward, as I did strive to go backward swift and quiet from the edge. And all the time I did look through the bushes very fixedly into the eyes of the giants; and lo, their eyes did shine red ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... drained his glass, and held it out again. "But you have your secrets, rather clumsily ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... had bought for herself, I thought; but I was so tired out from tramping around all day, that I finally dropped off to sleep. In the middle of the night I awoke and turned the pillow, so I shouldn't feel that hard lump. While smoothing out the pillow, I discovered that the ticking had been cut and clumsily basted together. Inside there was something hard that crackled like paper. 'I don't have to lie on rocks,' I said to myself; then I ripped open a corner of the pillow, and pulled out a small parcel, which was done up in wrapping paper and tied ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... shoulder, and stroked his back, meaning, old bachelor as he was, to be very tender and fatherly; but it was clumsily done, for the doctor had never served his time to playing at being father, and begun by practising on babies. Hence he only irritated ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... Occasionally two would clash foreheads. Then the powerful animals would push and wrestle, trying for a chance to gore. The decision of supremacy was a question of but a few minutes, and a bloody topknot the worst damage. The defeated one side-stepped hastily and clumsily out of ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... eyes filled with shy pleading. He could not, would not, for all of the solar system, have committed the unpardonable affront of rejecting the love so frankly offered. And yet he did not know how to accept this miracle. He did it clumsily, haltingly disclosing the secret recesses of his own heart and what had transpired there since the night he had taken the knife away ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... perspective to a mere thread. The little car leaped forward on the invisible down grade. Again I anchored myself to one of the top supports. A long, rangy fowl happened into the road just ahead of us, but immediately flopped clumsily, half afoot, half a-wing, to one side in the ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... the lines wrapped on his arm, stopped. De Spain lay a moment, then backed her up a step, pulled her head down by the bridle, clasped his wooden arms around her neck, spoke to her and, lifting her head, the mare dragged him to his feet. Clumsily and helplessly he loosened the tugs and the whiffletree, beat his hands together with idiotic effort, hooked the middle point of the whiffletree into the elbow of his left arm, brought the forearm and hand up flat against his shoulder, and with the hitching-strap ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... your battle for you," replied Strong unruffled; "and I did it clumsily, that's all! I might have known ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... he is down. My rivals, on the contrary, once that this wretched Hyperbolus has given them the cue, have never ceased setting upon both him and his mother. First Eupolis presented his 'Maricas';[520] this was simply my 'Knights,' whom this plagiarist had clumsily furbished up again by adding to the piece an old drunken woman, so that she might dance the cordax. 'Twas an old idea, taken from Phrynichus, who caused his old hag to be devoured by a monster of the deep.[521] Then Hermippus[522] fell foul of Hyperbolus and now ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... dimensions greatly varied. Ordinarily it was too short and thick for beauty, while occasionally it had the opposite defect, being too tall and slender. Its base was sometimes quite plain, sometimes diversified by a few mouldings, sometimes curiously and rather clumsily rounded (as in No. II., [PLATE LXI., Fig. 1]). The shaft was occasionally patterned. The capital, in one instance (No. I., [PLATE LXI., Fig. 3]), approaches to the Corinthian; in another (No. II.) it reminds us of the Ionic; but the volutes are ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... glass jar half filled with bruised laurel leaves, and Ma got it in, and after a day or two I set it, clumsily, and meant to take it to London, but had no small box to put it in. I told Mr. Rothschild about it, and he said it sounded like a Castnia—curious South American moths very near to butterflies. So he got out the drawer with them, but mine was not there; then he got another drawer half-empty, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... they wished to save their own—and he took the stoutest and heaviest of all. He made a sorry enough figure as he climbed awkwardly upon the stage, but when he had gained it, he towered full half a head above the other, for all his awkwardness. Nathless, he held his stick so clumsily that the crowd laughed in ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... transformation, into her face an eager light. She was slipping down into a weird small world which for a brief but fearful season was to be utterly her own, with agony and bloody sweat, and joy and a deep mystery. Clumsily he took her hand. It was moist and he felt it clutch his own. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... of a girl I always had my mind set on," pursued Jeb, who was an expert love-maker. "I like a smooth skin and pouty lips that looks as if they wanted to be kissed." He took the reins in one hand, put his arm round her, clumsily found her lips with his. She shrank slightly, then submitted. But Jeb somehow felt no inclination to kiss her again. After a moment he let his arm drop away from her waist and took the reins in both hands with an elaborate pretense that the bad road ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... at the key critically, turning it over in order to examine the workmanship. It was clumsily enough made, and he doubtless guessed how she had obtained it. Then he glanced at her as she stood breathless with a colourless face ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... bush, however, the object took on a tangible form and colour, and coming closer he picked it up and turned it over clumsily in his hand. A little velvet riding cap, undoubtedly a lady's, with the name of a famous New York costumer wrought in silk letters in the lining. Yes, there was no question about its being a lady's cap, for a long gleaming golden hair, with an undoubted tendency to curl, still ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... eddy, and the monster sinks noiselessly to enjoy his breakfast in the cooler depths beneath. And now we come to a sand bank running out some miles or so into the bay, and on which the water is less than three fathoms. Here the surface is broken by huge black objects, coming clumsily to the top, shooting out a jet of spray, and again disappearing. We let the boat glide gently along until she rests motionless above the bank, and stooping over the side with our faces close to the water, and sheltered by our ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... somber. I took off my long woolen comforter and wound it around Yulka's throat. She got so cold that we made her hide her head under the buffalo robe. Antonia and I sat erect, but I held the reins clumsily, and my eyes were blinded by the wind a good deal of the time. It was growing dark when we got to their house, but I refused to go in with them and get warm. I knew my hands would ache terribly if I went near a fire. Yulka forgot to give me back my comforter, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... frozen on his cap and upturned collar, while it was obvious from his snow-caked knees and elbows that he had fallen often. He stood staring dumbly at the light and warmth and at Ma Snow, then he stooped and began fumbling clumsily at the ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... Val got clumsily to his feet and then gave Charity a hand up, beating Rupert to it by about three seconds. "As we don't even know whether it is still in existence, there's no use in hunting for it," ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... you," she returned, "that he is a little too sharp to play with—clumsily. He suspected, from what had been told him, that we might have had a stormy scene together, and had wished to keep it to ourselves. He was quite ready to believe that the time you had failed so lamentably to account for had really been passed with me in 'une petite ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... palsied fingers. He sat down with heavy stupefaction. So this was the sud-spray of his beautiful bubble? It was incomprehensible! Bettina! Bettina! Oh, how could she? Where was her faith? No small voice answered from within the depths of his breast; and Mr. Strumley got clumsily to his feet. He was painfully conscious that he must do something—think something. But what was he to do? What was he to think? Could he ever make her understand? Make her believe? At least he could ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... and, looking up, he saw the Cockalorum perched upon the bough beside him. He was gazing sadly at the plum, and his feathers were more rumpled than ever. Presently he gave a long sigh and said, in his low, murmuring voice, "Perhaps it's a sugar-plum," and then flew clumsily away as before. ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... in beginning to speak, feels the natural embarrassment resulting from his new position. The novelty of the situation destroys his self-possession, and, with the loss of that, he becomes awkward, his arms and hands hang clumsily, and now, for the first time, seem to him worse than superfluous members. This embarrassment will be overcome gradually, as the speaker becomes familiar with his position; and it is sometimes overcome at once, by a powerful exercise of the attention upon the matter of the speech. When ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... instant made up its mind what thickness it will have. It seems to have begun by making itself as thick as it thought possible with the quantity of material at command. Still not being as thick as it would like to be, it has clumsily glued on more substance at one of its sides. Then it has thinned itself, in a panic of economy; then puffed itself out again; then starved one side to enlarge another; then warped itself quite out of its first line. Opaque, rough-surfaced, jagged ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... performs the first two of these tasks: and she teaches him how to perform the others. For the third, he has to cut her up and cast her into the river, whence she immediately rises whole again, triumphantly bringing the lost piece of plate. In butchering her he has, however, clumsily dropped a piece of her little finger on the ground. It is accordingly wanting when she rises from the river; and this is the token by which Iron Shoes recognizes her when he has to choose a bride; for, in choosing, he is only ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... in this manner, for example, that loaded dice may be discovered. Of course no dice are so clumsily loaded that they must always throw certain numbers; otherwise the fraud would be instantly detected. The loading, a constant cause, mingles with the changeable causes which determine what cast will be thrown in each individual instance. If the dice were not loaded, and the throw were ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... stub of moustaches recently removed; the eyes coal black, with sinister glances sent in suspicious furtiveness from under a broad hat-brim pulled low down over the brow; the figure fairly shaped, but with garments coarse and clumsily fitting, too ample both for body and limbs, as if intended to conceal rather than show them ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... white on his brown chest. The bay was waking up. The smokes of morning fires stood in faint spirals higher than the heads of palms; people moved between the houses; a herd of buffaloes galloped clumsily across a green slope; the slender figures of boys brandishing sticks appeared black and leaping in the long grass; a coloured line of women, with water bamboos on their heads, moved swaying through a thin grove of fruit-trees. Karain stopped ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... was a stranger to me, and, unless I am a poor judge, a cut-throat by profession. Finding that I made no sign of recognition he stood still saying clumsily, "Pardon, monsieur, I mistook you for another gentleman." Then, lowering his voice he added, "Monsieur wishes to remain unknown? It is well. I am silent ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... began, and then checking himself clumsily, he added, "that is to say we are comparatively well off as neighborhoods go. Our people are not idlers, however. Some of the foremost manufacturers in the country live ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... comparison and selection. We are, in fact, still somewhat in the same position as Michelangelo the younger. Whether any application of the critical method will enable us to do again successfully what he so clumsily attempted—that is, to reproduce a correct text from the debris offered to our selective faculty—I do not feel sure. Meanwhile I am quite certain that his principle was a wrong one, and that he dealt most unjustifiably with his ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... down the room, involuntarily illustrating the text of what he read with gestures, but he came every minute to look over what the boy had written, and Jean-Christophe, frightened by the two large faces looking over his shoulder, put out his tongue, and held his pen clumsily. A mist floated before his eyes; he made too many strokes, or smudged what he had written; and Melchior roared, and Jean Michel stormed; and he had to begin again, and then again, and when he thought that they had at last come to an end, a great blot fell on the immaculate page. Then they pulled ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... as though from inward depths clumsily fumbling for words, he always arrived at the same goal. The thought was at last as clear and lucid as a birch leaf ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... agony of helplessness. She could do nothing. Vaguely she knew the huge powers of the world rolling and crashing together, darkly, clumsily, stupidly, yet colossal, so that one was brushed along almost as dust. Helpless, helpless, swirling like dust! Yet she wanted so hard to rebel, to rage, to fight. But ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... hands went round. Ere either had proved his theology right By winning, or even beginning, the fight, A gray old professor of Latin came by, A staff in his hand and a scowl in his eye, And learning the cause of their quarrel (for still As they clumsily sparred they disputed with skill Of foreordination freedom of will) Cried: "Sirrahs! this reasonless warfare compose: Atwixt ye's no difference worthy of blows. The sects ye belong to—I'm ready ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... eyes, what he could still do. "I don't care for that. Of course, as I've said, you're acting, in your wonderful way, for yourself; and what's for yourself is no more my business—though I may reach out unholy hands so clumsily to touch it—than if it were something in Timbuctoo. It's only that you don't snub me, as you've had fifty chances to do—it's only your beautiful patience that makes one forget one's manners. In spite of your patience, all the same," she went on, "you'd do anything rather than be with ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... given her a hearty greeting, but the task was beyond her strength. She found that she no longer held her former social position—in fact, that she had no social status. The best people of the church were coolly polite and clumsily sympathetic. She preferred their coolness. The poorer people were frankly afraid of her. The innocent victim of a tragedy, the world held that she was somehow to blame—perhaps was equally guilty with the man. She suddenly found herself outside the ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... of the cartridges first," said Dick; and he helped Maisie down the slope of the fort to the sea,—a descent that she was quite capable of covering at full speed. Equally gravely Maisie took the grimy hand. Dick bent forward clumsily; Maisie drew the hand away, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... served, when a man, whose dress very much resembled his own, lounged into the wine-shop. He was a tall, clumsily built fellow, with an insolent expression upon his beardless face. His coat and cap were in an equally dilapidated condition; and in the squeaky voice of the rough, he ordered a plate of beef and half a bottle of wine, and, ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... recognition of his now definitely knowing what it was she would do for him. The "anything, anything" she had uttered in the Park went to and fro between them and under the poked-out china that interposed. It had all at last even put on the air of their not needing now clumsily to manoeuvre to converse: their former little postal make-believes, the intense implications of questions and answers and change, had become in the light of the personal fact, of their having had their moment, ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... smothered exclamation break from the fellow, but he could pay no further attention to him, for, as he rose from stooping over the ladder, he was set upon by a burly form. He dodged behind the ladder. The man sprang after him, blindly, clumsily, and tripped over the box. But he was up in a moment, and, reckless of the consequences of raising an alarm, was fumbling for a pistol, when there fell upon his ears a shout, the tramp of hurrying feet, and the sound of another window ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... observers. It is agreeable to chronicle a contrast to that flux of quasi-medical literature put forth by men who have no title (save, perhaps, a legal one) to affix the M. D. so pertinaciously displayed. For there has lately been no lack of books of quotations, clumsily put together and without inverted commas, designed to puff some patent panacea, the exclusive property of the compiler, or of volumes whose claim to originality lay in the bold attempt to work off a life-stock of irrelevant anecdotes, the miscellaneous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... voluptuous gravity of a young lion, a great cat. She kept him standing for some moments impassively. Then suddenly she hung her long, delicate fingers over the box, in doubt, and spasmodically jabbed at the cigarettes, clumsily raking one out ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... the tier, Smiling Jane," said the captain gruffly, as he stumbled clumsily into a boat and sat down in the stern. "Why don't you have better seats in ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... kittle," she wheezed out, then relaxed into groans, and wiped clumsily at the sweat on her ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... in, the steam winch was clattering, and the landing-stage had begun to come aboard, when the two men whose duty it was to cast off ran out on the tilting stage and dropped from its shore end. One of them fell clumsily, tried to rise, and sank back into the shadow; but the other scrambled up the steep bank and loosened the half-hitches in the wet hawser. With the slackening of the line the steamer began to move out into the stream, and the man at the mooring-post looked around ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... apprehensions in the case of a foreign language is partially true even with the tongue we learned in childhood. Indeed, we all speak different dialects; one shall be copious and exact, another loose and meagre; but the speech of the ideal talker shall correspond and fit upon the truth of fact - not clumsily, obscuring lineaments, like a mantle, but cleanly adhering, like an athlete's skin. And what is the result? That the one can open himself more clearly to his friends, and can enjoy more of what makes life truly valuable - intimacy with ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things. A twig that he thought a long way off, would the next instant hit him on the nose or rake along his ribs. There were inequalities of surface. Sometimes he overstepped and stubbed his nose. Quite as often he understepped ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... impulsively, and clumsily offered him, in a breath, whisky, shuffleboard, or cowboy pool—sound Pretorian remedies for all human woes. These consolations he refused and took his leave. Midnight found me in the same chair, thinking ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... flowers were again introduced by an Italian, they were clumsily manufactured in comparison to those seen in the present age of improvement; for I had the opportunity of inspecting some of their "miserable remains" but a few years since. Still I must acknowledge ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... explain away coincidences to men who were the victims of them is likely to need more sympathy than he will get. The dictionary defines them clumsily as instances of coinciding, apparently accidental, but which ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... compilation of insignificant cases, clumsily thrown together, and calculated to set its author high indeed upon the rolls of fame; proving to the world that a Mr. Henry Clements can reason very feebly; that his premises are habitually false; and that presumptuous preaching is the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... church from any point of the compass, but access to it may mean anything—perhaps, a wandering up courts and passages, a turning round the corners of old narrow streets, an unsavoury acquaintance with the regions of trampery, and an uncomfortable perambulation along corn-torturing causeways and clumsily paved roads. Pigeon flyers, dog fanciers, gossipping vagrants, crying children, old iron, stray hens, women with a passion for sitting on door steps, men looking at nothing with their hands in their pockets, ancient rags pushed into broken windows, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... About forty cells, separated from each other by walls of earth, carried up from the ground to a few inches above the terraced roof, constituted a ground-floor on which rested a group of not more than a dozen similar cells. The walls of this structure were of stones, irregularly broken and clumsily piled, but they were covered by a thick coating of clay so that nothing of the rough core remained visible. Instead of doors or entrances, air-holes, round or ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... this strange, wild poem, which extends to about two hundred and fifty lines, the only copy that Lord Byron, I believe, ever wrote, he presented to Lord Holland. Though with a good deal of vigour and imagination, it is, for the most part, rather clumsily executed, wanting the point and condensation of those clever verses of Mr. Coleridge[103], which Lord Byron, adopting a notion long prevalent, has attributed to Professor Person. There are, however, some of the stanzas of "The Devil's Drive" well ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... cannot shift its consciousness from the sensations of the outer world to the inner states of being. It is not able to "know itself." The difference may be clumsily illustrated by the example of a man feeling, seeing or hearing something that gives him a pleasurable sensation, or the reverse. He is conscious of the feeling or sensation, and that it is pleasurable ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... to act. He grasped the branch tightly and swung himself down at full length, so that his dangling feet were almost within the bear's reach. The grizzly, with an exultant "whuff," galloped clumsily back to the tree and made a ferocious swipe at his enemy, who pulled himself up just in time. Snarling and mouthing horribly, the bear once more moved toward the lake, torn between the desire to investigate ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... intimation of things extraordinary transpiring on her premises. What things, she might by no means see, or at that time be able to discover; but a delicious little ravelled plot lay tempting her to disentanglement; and in the midst, folded round and round in cobwebs, had she not secured "Meess Lucie" clumsily involved, like ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... stupid in the matter," he said, feeling for his words. "I've gone about it clumsily. To tell you the truth—What does ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... whose inborn courtesy knew no distinctions, received my nautical friend as if he had been an admiral instead of a common forecastle-hand. Sailor Ben pulled an imaginary tuft of hair on his forehead, and bowed clumsily. Sailors have a way of using their forelock as a sort of ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and went deliberately across the wide clear space that was the flying field. It halted near the farther side. In minutes the door of a hangar swung wide. There was the sputtering of a not-yet-warmed-up motor. The big plane came slowly out, its motors coughing now and then. It swung clumsily across the field, turned in a wide circle, and stopped some forty or fifty ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... a packet of extracts from newspapers and periodicals, which Mr. Bronte has sent me. It is touching to look them over, and see how there is hardly any notice, however short and clumsily-worded, in any obscure provincial paper, but what has been cut out and carefully ticketed with its date by the poor, bereaved father,—so proud when he first read them—so desolate now. For one and all are full of praise of this ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sight of this man produced on you was a sense of coarse, heavy, irresistible power. He was clumsily built, a 'shambler,' as they say about us, but there was an air of triumphant vigour about him, and—strange to say—his bear-like figure was not without a certain grace of its own, proceeding, perhaps, from his absolutely placid confidence in his own strength. It was hard to decide at ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... particularly proud of the achievement, I was about to remount my horse, when Hissodecha reminded me that I had neglected to scalp the fallen foe; so I was compelled to perform that operation, which I did rather clumsily. A thorough search through the thicket and over the prairie having satisfied my savage companions that no more of the Coyoteros had been present, we returned to the dead buffaloes and began ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... the shell remains distended, smooth, intact, of the purest white, with the circular lid hanging to the mouth of the door of exit. The egg of the bird breaks clumsily under the blows of a wart-like excrescence which is formed expressly upon the beak of the unborn bird; the egg of the Cricket, of a far superior structure, opens like an ivory casket. The pressure of the inmate's head is sufficient to ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... grim, gaunt, stolid gentleman of middle age, looking like anybody or nobody, with long hair parted in the middle and falling down on both sides to the lace collar round the neck; one shoulder is cloaked, and the other shown tight in the buttoned tunic or coat; and the arms meet clumsily across the breast, the left arm uppermost. Round the oval was the legend, "Joannis Miltoni Angli Effigies, anno aetatis vigess: pri. W. M. Sculp."—i.e. "Portrait of John Milton, Englishman, in the 2lst year of his age: W. M. Sculp." The legend said ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... moved like a person in his sleep; and it seemed as if the lamp caught fire and the bottle came uncorked with the facility of thought. Still, he had some curiosity about the appearance of his visitor, and tried in vain to turn the light into his face; either he handled the lamp clumsily, or there was a dimness over his eyes; but he could make out little more than a shadow at table with him. He stared and stared at this shadow, as he wiped out the glasses, and began to feel cold and strange about the heart. The silence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for the door, then turned to where Riley was clumsily crawling from his couch. An arm under each of his, and the three men stumbled from ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... plausible an unconventional view. It comes from the economic necessity of interesting the reader quickly, and the economic risk involved in not interesting him at all, or of offending him by unexpected news insufficiently or clumsily described. All these difficulties combined make for uncertainty in the editor when there are dangerous issues at stake, and cause him naturally to prefer the indisputable fact and a treatment more readily adapted to the reader's interest. The indisputable fact and the easy interest, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... with fixed eyes. The flame of the lighted candle which he was carrying scarcely showed in the daylight. And behind him, almost touching him, came Albine's coffin, borne by four peasants on a sort of litter, painted black. The coffin was clumsily covered with too short a pall, and at the lower end of it the fresh deal of which it was made could be seen, with the heads of the nails sparkling with a steely glitter. Upon the pall lay flowers: handfuls of white ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... door until the minister and his wife arrived and passed into the house; then the church-attendants followed, the loitering boys always contriving to scuffle noisily in from the horse-sheds at the last moment, making much scraping and clatter with their heavy boots on the sanded floor, and tumbling clumsily up the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... one must experience who wishes to carry home with him some pictorial reminiscences of his travels. Unfortunately I had again brought with me nothing but the most miserable common paper, and had clumsily crowded several objects into one sheet. But my paternal teacher was not perplexed at this: he cut the sheets apart; had the parts which belonged to each other put together by the bookbinder; surrounded the single ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... food upon the empty plates, and Rachel's lips twitched as she saw that he clumsily tried to arrange ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... in the seat of Counsel, your Majesty, and he hath clumsily spoiled your plans. How indeed could it ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... more than curious to know what the men had in mind. As soon as the car came to a stand the lighter man, who had not been hurt in the accident, jumped rather clumsily from the tonneau. Frank noticed this with surprise, for up to now he had looked upon the other as rather agile. Could he have been injured after all, and was just beginning to feel the effect of his ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... antechamber, to admit of the passage of some vases of flowers, green shrubs and variegated foliage plants that were being brought in to decorate the salons. A fete! And this evening! In the arrival of those flowers for decoration, at the moment when chance, clumsily or wickedly, so suddenly revealed that crushing news, Guy saw so much irony that he could not forbear looking at them for a moment, almost insulting in their beauty and ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... be heard on the stairs. They were slow and clanking because the carpets were up and the house full of echoes. To Thor's fevered imagination it seemed as if Claude dragged his feet like a man wearing chains, going haltingly and clumsily before some ominous tribunal. The sensation—it was more that than anything else—caused the elder brother to withdraw into the depths of the library, where he turned on ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... he would never find what he sought. It came at last, a crumpled telegram. He threw it down before her, and then thrust his chair back clumsily and went hastily out of the room. She heard him sob. She had not dared to ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... 1708 was the date at the corner of the street. Six or seven drab-coloured, flat-chested, dim-windowed houses stood in a line— theirs wedged in the middle of them. A poor medallion with a profile head of him had been clumsily let into the wall. Several worn steps led to the thin high door with an old-fashioned fanlight above it. Frank rang the bell, and a buxom cheerful ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... to get the effect of Blackletter with the Roman form is likely to result clumsily. The celebrated Roman faces designed by William Morris (too familiar to require reproduction here) are, despite their real beauty, over-black on the page, and awkward when examined in detail. While ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... it long, if they treat it as recklessly as that," commented Bert, for the two lads having leaped into the auto, Sam threw in the gears so clumsily that the machine was stalled, with a grinding that did not augur well for ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... have acquired such prodigious deftness, these master paralysers are not, in fact, always infallible. Occasionally the Sphex blunders and gropes, "operates clumsily"; the cricket revives, gets upon its feet, turns round and round, and tries to walk. But, inquires Fabre, do you say that having profited by a fortuitous act, which has turned out to be favourable to them, they have perfected themselves ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... consists of a very simple, but beautiful and interesting, family-memoir, into which some later Jewish poet or fabulist of Alexandria wove the ridiculous and frigid machinery, borrowed from the popular superstitions of the Greeks (though, probably, of Egyptian origin), and accommodated, clumsily enough, to the purer monotheism of the Mosaic law. The Rape of the Lock is another instance of a simple tale thus enlarged at a later period, though in this case by the same author, and with a very different result. Now unless Mr. Hillhouse is Romanist enough to receive this ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... he winked to his partner to agree, then got a lantern, lit it clumsily, and shuffled out with ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... room!" gasped Aunt Martha, collapsing in a chair just as Uncle Peter appeared in the doorway, bowing low before the visitors, who stalked clumsily into the parlor. ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... Involuntarily, he stepped behind some alder brush off the trail. Another flutter of wind thinning the turbid mist. There was a whiff of camp smoke. Through the mist, he could make out figures not a hundred yards away—five horses ready for travel, four men clumsily lifting a fellow in cow-boy slicker into his saddle. The man fell forward over the pummel. The group seemed undecided what to do. Then, picked out—distinct—deliberate—coming over the stones from the lake side—leisurely, lazily, careful, soft footsteps with rests between—The Ranger ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Averell, Jr., who worked his tannery by slave labor. One of his slaves, known as Tom Bronk, was for many years well known in Cooperstown as the servant of the former owner's son, William Holt Averell, and lived to a great age. The clumsily written bill of sale by which Tom Bronk became the property of James Averell, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... plucking at his obstinate holster, and glaring for a foe. His eye fell first on his deliverer, leaning easily against the bar watching him, while the more and more curious audience scattered, and held themselves ready to murder the boy if he should point his pistol their way. He was dragging at it clumsily, and at last it came. Specimen Jones sprang like a cat, and held the barrel vertical ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... began to bathe Neale's face with cold water. There was a flickering camp-fire outside that threw shadows on the wall of the tent. By its light Neale saw that King's left hand was bandaged and that he used it clumsily. ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... now for the first time that I understood how shrewdly, and yet how clumsily now and then, the man had weaved together his information. He spoke with an abundance of detail that astonished me; he spoke of names and places with the greatest precision; he related how himself had been sent from St. Omer's with ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... paths than had the girl. Love-lent wings are swifter than an impulse born of hatred and resentment can be. She had flown upon such wings to save the man who filled her innocent thoughts with longing; Joe had gone clumsily, despite his cunning as a mountaineer, for leaden, murderous thoughts had weighed him down, hampering the quickness of his wit, delaying his fleet feet, confusing the alertness of his watchfulness for faint-limned trails, loose areas perilous of slides upon ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... Tepe I am back in the car. Confound this dromedary! If he had not managed to get smashed so clumsily No. 11 would no longer be unknown to me. He would have opened his panel, we would have talked in a friendly way, and separated with a friendly shake of the hand. Now he will be full of anxiety, he knows his fraud is discovered, that there is some one who has reason to suspect his intentions, some ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne |
