"Unwieldy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the gates of a house where the archpriest of one of the churches resided, and from its doors there leapt a damsel clad in a jerkin and wearing a scarf over her head. For a while she thumped the gates so vigorously as to set all the dogs barking; then the gates stiffly opened, and admitted this unwieldy phenomenon of the road. Lastly, the barinia herself alighted, and stood revealed as Madame Korobotchka, widow of a Collegiate Secretary! The reason of her sudden arrival was that she had felt so uneasy about the possible outcome of Chichikov's ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a day off and go with me, Pete," he suggested, getting an unwieldy-looking pipe from the pocket of his canvas fishing-coat, and opening his eyes at a trout-fly snagged in the mouthpiece. "Now, how did that fly come there?" he asked aggrievedly, while he released it daintily for all his fingers looked so fat and awkward. ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... enjoying himself in clawing and tearing to ribbons everything within reach, and by the time his breathless keeper from the other ship arrived upon the scene to conduct his charge home in disgrace, the cabin was in a state of utter desolation. A bull in a china shop is nothing to an unwieldy brute of a bear in a small apartment measuring ten feet by eight. All's well that ends well, but the officer's best trousers were completely ruined, and he himself never heard the end of his Sabbath afternoon adventure. The ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... had now got a most patient sitter, for they will lie for weeks together without stirring; but I had to keep throwing small pebbles at him, in order to make him open his eyes, and prevent his going to sleep. The flies appear to torment these unwieldy monsters most cruelly, their eyes and nostrils being stuffed full of them. I got a good sketch of the group. They appeared to stare at me occasionally with some little astonishment, stretching up their immense heads and looking around; but finding all still (I suppose they ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... one cold look and turned from it; we were so pained by its appearance that we refused to ride in it through the town. Instead, we started off on foot, trying to look as if we had no association with it, and we climbed into the unwieldy vehicle only when the city streets were far behind us. Every available inch of space in the wagon was filled with bedding and provisions. As yet we had no furniture; we were to make that for ourselves when we ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... butt of Mr. Wilson's unwieldy sarcasms. Robertson, he tells us, was the "principal of the University High School of Edinburgh,"—an institution of which we do not remember ever to have heard before. He is especially indignant that "Robertson—a Presbyterian minister!" (the Italics and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... paddle; note the languid grace of their recumbence: chins on hands, heels waving lazily in air; hear them squeal in inharmonious unison, as a young member of the "Browning Club," makes as though to splatter them, or mischievously threatens to overturn their unwieldy couchlike craft. Free from the restriction of ideas about "society," about the "tradition" of Palm Beach, about "convention," they seem to detect no difference between this resort and certain summer beaches, more ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... his limits swells the rage Of Bolingbroke, covering your fearful land With hard bright steel and hearts harder than steel. White-beards have arm'd their thin and hairless scalps Against thy majesty; and boys, with women's voices, Strive to speak big, and clap their female joints In stiff unwieldy arms against thy crown; Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows Of double-fatal yew against thy state; Yea, distaff-women manage rusty bills Against thy seat: both young and old rebel, And all goes worse than I have power ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... mass of living corruption." Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall," also says that "his (Galerius's) death was caused by a very painful and lingering disorder. His body, swelled by an intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with ulcers and devoured by immense swarms of those insects who have given their names to this most loathsome disease." It is also said that the African Vandal King, the Arian Huneric, died of the disease. Antiochus, surnamed the "Madman," ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... doubt of it, sir." Tristram stared at the old gentleman, who was of a tall unwieldy figure, short ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... slightest disposition to retire from the contest. Their wounds appeared but to goad them to greater fury, and to stimulate them to redoubled effort. The truly amazing activity displayed by these ponderous and unwieldy creatures was perhaps the most remarkable feature of the whole affair. They wheeled and doubled about each other with the nimbleness of fighting dogs, the rhinoceros leaping in to deliver his stroke, and then springing aside to avoid the thrust of the elephant's tusks with a rapidity that ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... monsters concerning which she wrote her fascinating pages, "A Week in a House-Boat"! We could scarce catch a glimpse of the river upon our tramps—and it was our constant silvery accompaniment, as the treble to a part-song—without coming across these ungraceful, unwieldy creatures, seeming like bloated denizens of depths below come to bask upon the surface. Hundreds of them dot the river between Teddington and Oxford: once we counted ten between Ethel and the wooded ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... were, and still are, frequently noticeable, bringing home on their backs faggots of dead wood, or sacks of fir-cones, picked up in the fir-woods a mile away or more. Prodigious and unwieldy loads these were. I have often met women bent nearly double under them, toiling painfully along, with hats or bonnets pushed awry and skirts draggling. Occasionally tiny urchins, too small to be left at home alone, would be clinging ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... talk in this strain his two sons grew excited, and started to perform hunting dances, in which the number of imaginary lions and buffaloes they slew was something enormous. Every now and then, too, the boys killed some imaginary elephant, out of whose unwieldy head they made believe to hack the tusks, which they invariably brought and laid at their young masters' feet, grunting the while ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... from farm to farm grinding the produce of the various orchards. They sometimes poured a quantity of the acid juice into the mill to sharpen it, as cutting a lemon will sharpen a knife. The great press, with its unwieldy screw and levers, squeezed the liquor from the cut-up apples in the horse-hair bags: a cumbersome apparatus, but not without interest; for surely so rude an engine must date back far in the past. The old ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... Grace was about to return to the gypsy camp she heard a sudden swish of draperies behind her. Glancing hastily about, she laughed as she saw the Sphinx's unwieldy head towering ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... one who had the reputation of having been a student. What was more surprising was, the withering sarcasm that blasted like the simoom, the brilliant sallies of wit that flashed like a sabre, the gushing eddies of humour that drowned all opposition and overwhelmed those ponderous and unwieldy arguments which the producers announced as rocks, but which he proved to be porpoises. Never was there such a triumphant debut; and a peroration of genuine eloquence, because of genuine feeling, concluded amid the long and renewed ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... II. (1202-1241), at a time when the German kingdom was too weak and distracted to intervene to save its seaboard; but the treachery of a vassal and the loss of one great battle sufficed to plunge this unwieldy, unsubstantial empire in the dust. (See ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... its feet one after another, like the camel or the horse, but two of its feet together, or simultaneously. We saw the footprints of young as well as old ones. This plateau is the real home of the giraffe. No place could be better adapted for such an unwieldy creature. There is abundance of small tholukh, on which it feeds; all the country is open around to it, and it is out of the reach of ferocious animals. Towards the evening the marks of the giraffe disappeared, and were succeeded by the footprints of what ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... as the time of Henry VI. the brotherhood of lawyers had attained to an unwieldy growth, and it separated into two halls, the original two halls of the Knights Templar forming the nuclei around which the frequenters of each grouped themselves. Thus arose the Middle and Inner Temple. Under the eighth Henry the two societies became direct ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... agreed, the sailor quitted him, the composer opened his piano, and in a few minutes the march was written. He appears, however, to have had a delicacy rare among the musical birds of passage and of prey who come to feed on the unwieldy wealth of England. Conceiving that the receipt of a sum so large as thirty guineas for a labour so slight, would be a species of plunder, he came home early in the evening, and composed other two marches, in order to allow the liberal sea captain ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... house that has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which Minerva made, that she "had not made it movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided"; and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, in this town, who, for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... another matter. He was a headstrong man, impetuous, prone to leap to conclusions—a very walking heap of favourable and unfavourable prejudice. Thus, neither Claudia nor Darco was dethroned. The headlong, stammering, vivid man had made a mistake—the fat, unwieldy, diamond-hearted creature, all crusted with slag and scoria. Paul could have cried to know that ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... courage by some stout rifleman, fighting for his cowering wife and children, that a score of savages would recoil baffled, leaving many of their number dead. A boat's crew of resolute men might beat back, with heavy loss, an over-eager onslaught of Indians in canoes, or push their slow, unwieldy craft from shore under a rain of rifle-balls, while the wounded oarsmen strained at the bloody handles of the sweeps, and the men who did not row gave shot for shot, firing at the flame tongues in the dark woods. A party of scouts, true wilderness veterans, equal ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... found that he was in Dr. Dutton's house, and that Matthew had disappeared and deserted him, he was at a loss to know what to say or what move to make. His mind was far from clear, and his tongue so unwieldy that he could hardly ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... or the colic, or the cholera infantum, just when it was imperatively necessary that it should not have them. But there is no help for it. I shudder and bravely gird myself for the work. I tug at the heavy, bulky, unwieldy carpets, and am covered with dust and abomination. I think carpets are the most untidy, unwholesome nuisances in the whole world. It is impossible to be clean with them under your feet. You may sweep your carpet twenty times and raise a dust on the twenty-first. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the Boer army for long had been a matter of surprise, if not to the initiated, at least to the general public, and, as it later appeared, to the Government itself. They had sent out important generals and learned tacticians, and a fairly large and unwieldy mass of men, who were bound by their healthy appetites to stick to their base and hug the railway lines, while the enemy shifted about with the most annoying and confounding velocity, delighting to deceive as to their position, and ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... have passed for a nobleman anywhere except alongside of a real one. One might really have been excused for fancying him of a different race of beings from Monsieur Boulederouloue, the shapelessness of whose huge unwieldy frame was happily rendered undistinguishable by an extravagantly full suit of the Louis Quatorze fashion. An enormous full-bottomed wig of the same period surmounted and flanked his full moon face of pasty whiteness, most like the battered and colourless visage ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... still the objects of classic interest, of general homage, and of generous emulation, among all the nobler spirits of the world? We pass over the records of Oriental empire as we pass over the ruins of their capitals; we find nothing but masses of wreck, unwieldy heaps of what once, perhaps, was symmetry and beauty; fragments of vast piles, which once exhibited the lavish grandeur of the monarch, or the colossal labour of the people; but all now mouldered and melted down. The mass essentially ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... know that to be the opinion of the best seamen in Shetland?-I believe it is. For instance, the large boats used in the neighbourhood of Lerwick for herrings have often been lost when the common six-oared boats came safely. These large boats are more unwieldy and more difficult to handle ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... tall, stout, gentlemanly man, but, while a perfect gentleman in his conversation, and having less of the American accent than most Americans, his manner is somewhat ungainly—perhaps owing to his make, which is large and a little inclining to the unwieldy. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... be said that the red-faced gentleman walked, neither could it be said that the red-faced gentleman ran. His mode of progression might best be described as a succession of short and unwieldy jumps, which, as he was a rather stout gentleman, appeared to indicate some very urgent and pressing need for hurry. His face was bathed in perspiration, and his collar had become flaccid and shapeless from the same cause. It appeared to Tom, as he gazed at those ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cork-jackets; for every man had to be made into a life-boat himself. I descended the bank, and stood on the edge of the canal as it drew near. Then I saw that every oar was loosely but firmly fastened to the rowlock, so that it could be dropped and caught again in a moment; and that the gay sides of the unwieldy-looking creature were festooned with ropes from the gunwale, for the men to lay hold of when she capsized, for the earlier custom of fastening the men to their seats had been quite given up, because their ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... the Referendum has no counterpart in our own country, unless we except the somewhat unwieldy provisions in various States for the revisions of their constitutions by popular vote. It is undoubtedly the most successful experiment in applying the principles of direct government which has been made in modern times. Having already written ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... tramways; surface railways. His eyes leaped from moundlike piles of tailings, the powdery crush spit out by the concentrating mills, to boulder-like heaps of rocks that had been wheeled away to save the teeth of the mills, and his ears turned distraught from the groaning clank of unwieldy iron tubs, swinging up through skeleton shafts, to the sputtering plunk-plunk of drill engines and ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... lost, which was probably a mirror. The left arm is raised, and with the left hand she presses a lotus lily to her breast. The body is easy and well formed, the figure indicates youth, the face is open, smiling, pleasant, and somewhat plebeian. To modify the unwieldy mass of the headdress was beyond the skill of the artist, but the bust is delicately and elegantly modelled, the clinging garment gives discreet emphasis to the shape, and the action of the hand which holds the flower is rendered with grace and naturalness. All these ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... have no ornamental plumage to display. Goatsuckers, geese, carrion vultures, and many other birds of plain plumage have been observed to dance, spread their wings or tails, and perform strange love-antics. The courtship of the great albatross, a most unwieldy and dull coloured bird, has been thus described by Professor Moseley: "The male, standing by the female on the nest, raises his wings, spreads his tail and elevates it, throws up his head with the bill in the air, or stretches it straight out, or forwards, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... locality, and so closely has he investigated every possible condition of it as being the seat of hernial, that the only novelty which now remains to be sought for is that of a simplification of the facts, already known to be far too much obscured by an unwieldy nomenclature, and a useless detail of trifling evidence. And it would seem that nothing can more directly tend to this simplification, than that of viewing the inguinal and femoral regions, not separately, but as a relationary ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... the romance of Lydia and John Wodrush. In my opinion she chose the wrong one. The history of the Wodrush elopement, compressed to a couple of pages, seems to me far more original and interesting than the present rather unwieldy tale. The Magic Gate is a war-novel confessed, and I can only fancy that the thronging new sensations of the past three years have proved a little too much for Mrs. RAWSON'S sense of form. She ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... conclusively show that in the summer-time it was visited by bisons with their calves, and in Winter by reindeer. This theory is open to a great many objections. As is well known, some animals make quite extensive migrations annually, but we can scarcely believe that heavy, unwieldy animals like the hippopotamus, were then such industrious travelers as to wander every year from Italy to Northern England and return. But the very ground on which this theory rests, that of strongly contrasted summers and winters, ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... flotilla of small craft, part of which was heavily armed. It is now known that these imposing forces were rarely, if ever, up to their nominal strength; that part of the flotilla was unseaworthy; that the difficulties of getting under way were never overcome; and that the unwieldy mass would probably have been routed, if not destroyed, by the cruisers and gunboats stationed on the Kentish coast. Still, even if part of it made land, the crisis would be serious in view of the paucity and ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... pigeons were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. 5. Some sat with one eye turned up as if watching the weather. 6. Some sat with their heads under their wings or buried in their bosoms. 7. Others were swelling and cooing and bowing about their dames. 8. Sleek, unwieldy porkers were grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens. 9. From these pens sallied forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. 10. A stately squadron of snowy geese was riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... assumed a thousand various forms. The animated earth seemed to paw the verdant mead, and to despise the mould from which it came. A disdainful horse, it shook its flowing mane, and snuffed the enlivening breeze, and stretched along the plain. The red-eyed wolf and the unwieldy ox burst like the mole the concealing continent, and threw the earth in hillocs. The stag upreared his branching head. The thinly scattered animals wandered among the unfrequented hills, and cropped the untasted herb. Meantime ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... a new world and he was out of place. Those dreams had been coloured, fantastically, beautifully. In the white pebbles, the golden sand, the curling grey smoke of the Cove, he had formed pictures that had lightened many dreary and lonely hours in Auckland. He was to come back; away from that huge unwieldy life in which comfort had no place and rest was impossible, back to all the old things, the wonderful glorious things that meant home and tradition and, above all, love. He was a sentimentalist, ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... thing which interested him most and to which he gave all his strength and time was the placing of unfortunate children in good homes. It was through his labor and influence the Children's Home Society had been established and struggled for existence. He was hampered in his work by an unwieldy board of women managers, but he realized the importance of having a large board, because the more persons interested the more money it was possible to raise for his pet charity. At the time of Mary Louise's call funds were very low, so low that it seemed as though the society might have to ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... of Koyunjik), rising directly above the waters of the Tigris,—named in the ancient language "the Arrow" from the swiftness of its current—into the golden and crimson glory of an Eastern sunset! Although the sameness and unwieldy nature of the material used must have put architectural beauty of outline out of the question, the general effect must have been one of massive grandeur and majesty, aided as it was by the elaborate ornamentation ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... and Spaniards, its long flanks were fiercely assailed by the Africans, who, facing about to the right and left, charged it home, and threw it into utter disorder. In this state, when they were forced together into one unwieldy crowd, and already falling by thousands, whilst the Gauls and Spaniards, now advancing in their turn, were barring further progress in front, and whilst the Africans were tearing their mass to pieces on both flanks, Hasdrubal, with his victorious Gaulish and Spanish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... senseless proud dolts are the Danes, who stand so much upon their unwieldy burly-boned soldiery, that they account of no man that hath not a battle-axe at his girdle to hough dogs with, or wears not a cock's feather in a thrummed hat like a cavalier. Briefly, he is the best fool braggart under heaven. For besides nature hath lent him a flab-berkin face, ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... to enlist into the Lancers," answered Peterkin. "You see, Jack, I find the club rather an unwieldy instrument for my delicately formed muscles, and I flatter myself I shall do more ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... at what point he would probably make the attempt, in season to concentrate so large an army to oppose him. Alexander's troops, being a comparatively small and compact body, and being accustomed to move with great promptness and celerity, could easily evade any attempt of such an unwieldy mass of forces to oppose his crossing at any particular point upon the stream. At any rate, Darius did not make any such attempt, and Alexander had no difficulties to encounter in crossing the Tigris other ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... long been an inmate, also nodded her unwieldy head in confirmation, while a low murmur of assent arose from the others. Abraham could only pass his hand over his brow, uneasily shuffle his maligned heels over the floor and await further developments; for he did not have the slightest conception as to "what they ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... ordinary way, appeal to the ear or to the eye. His voice was not melodious; rather shrill and piercing, especially when it rose to its high treble in moments of great animation. His figure was unhandsome, and the action of his unwieldy limbs awkward. He commanded none of the outward graces of oratory as they are commonly understood. His charm was of a different kind. It flowed from the rare depth and genuineness of his convictions and his sympathetic ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... itself confronted with a problem, since the diameter of the caterpillar exceeded that of the shaft. It seemed to reflect for a few moments, and then with feverish haste enlarged the shaft. Another difficulty had then to be overcome. Was it possible to force such a bulky and unwieldy body head first down—the habitual way? The insect came to a rapid decision in the negative. Backing into the shaft, it seized the caterpillar by the head and drew it down, presently emerging, and how it managed to squeeze past so tight a plug is another ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... was fought at Magnesia, B.C. 190, not far from Smyrna, in the valley of the Hermus. The forces of Antiochus were eighty thousand, including twelve thousand cavalry, but were undisciplined and unwieldy. Those of Scipio were about half as numerous. The Romans were completely successful, losing only twenty-four horsemen and three hundred infantry, whereas the loss of Antiochus was fifty thousand—a victory as brilliant as that of Alexander at Issus. Asia Minor was surrendered to the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... it is an exhibition of hideous cowardice. For, after all, it is not here, but in broad daylight, with the exhilaration of conflict, where he can assure himself at every blow he has the longest sword and the heaviest hand, that this man's physical bravery can keep him up; he is an unwieldy ship, and needs plenty of way ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... propitious omen. The few which are supported by scientific causes give support to the many that have their origin only in his own excited and doubting temperament. The gambols of the dolphin, the earnest and busy passage of the porpoise, the ponderous sporting of the unwieldy whale, and the screams of the marine birds, have all, like the signs of the ancient soothsayers, their attendant consequences of good or evil. The confusion between things which are explicable, and things which are not, gradually ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... abstract, metaphysical beings, became the sole object of their thoughts; were the subject of their continual contemplation; they looked upon them as realities of the highest importance: thus nature quite disappeared; she was despoiled of her rights; she was considered as nothing more than an unwieldy mass, destitute of power; devoid of energy, as an heap of ignoble matter purely passive: who, incapable of acting by herself, was not competent to any of the operations they beheld, without the direct, the immediate agency of the moving powers they had associated ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... side, and two or three settle beds on the other, conspicuous, as I have said, for their uncommon cleanliness; whilst hung from the ceiling were the glaiks, a machine for churning; and beside the dresser stood an immense churn, certainly too unwieldy to be managed except by machinery. The farmer was a ruddy-faced Milesian, who wore a drab frieze coat, with a velvet collar, buff waistcoat, corduroy small-clothes, and top-boots* well greased from the tops down. He was not only an agriculturist, but a grazier—remarkable ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... given verbatim by a Micmac named Stephen Flood, who was a "very intelligent and reliable Indian." Cool-puj-ot is almost identical with Shawandasee, the guardian of the South. "He is represented as an affluent, plethoric old man, who has grown unwieldy from repletion, and seldom moves. He keeps his eyes steadfastly fixed on the north. When he sighs in autumn, we have those balmy southern airs, which communicate warmth and delight over the northern hemisphere, and make the Indian summer." The "affluence" ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... lashing their sides with their short tails, enjoying the bright warmth of the early sunshine; then, with much splashing and the gurgling of soft mud, they left the pool and clambered up the bluff with unwieldy agility. As soon as they turned, my brother and cousin ran for their rifles, but before they got back the buffaloes had crossed the bluff crest. Climbing after them, the two hunters found, when they reached the summit, that their game, instead of halting, had struck ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... said that the senses of children are quick. They are, on the contrary, unwieldy in turning, unready in reporting, until advancing age teaches them agility. This is not lack of sensitiveness, but mere length of process. For instance, a child nearly newly born is cruelly startled by a sudden crash in the room—a child who has never learnt to fear, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... sort of man put by the side of a starving street urchin of seven. The only advantage the thresher apparently possessed was in its eyes, which, when one could get a glimpse of them, looked like those of a hawk; while the unwieldy cetacean had little tiny optics, not much bigger than those of a common haddock, which were placed in an unwieldy lump of a head, that seemed ever so much bigger than its body, with a tremendous ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... manuscript before him in two pieces, be it that the thin pellicles by which the single leaves are connected were loosened in one place or that the whole was separated only then in order not to be obliged to manipulate the whole unwieldy strip in the operation of copying. A third possibility, to which we shall presently return, is that of assuming two separate pieces from the beginning; in this case Goetze and the others must be supposed to have seen it in this condition, but to have ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... and blood that fortune has decreed that every mortal should carry about with him. The man who is properly initiated in the arcana of a closet, ought to be able to squeeze himself through a key hole, and, whenever any impertinent Marplot appears to blast him, to change this unwieldy frame into the substance of the viewless winds. How often must a theoretical statesman like myself, have regretted that incomparable invention, the ring of Gyges! How often must he have wished to be possessed of one of those diabolical ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... a huge, unwieldy crowd so closely packed that nothing can be done with it and it can do nothing with itself, you will note three different types. There are the entirely inert—and they make up most of the crowd. They do not resist; they helplessly move this way and that as the chance waves of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... had been a wiggery so long. Nobody could guess of what it was that France or the world might be with child: nobody, till the birth in 1789, and even for a generation afterwards. France is weakly and unwieldy, has strange enough longings for chalky, inky, visionary, foolish substances, and may be in the family-way for ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... though there were several houses or huts standing, in which they found a good quantity of dried fowls, and among them a great number of ostriches, of which the thighs were as large as those of a sheep. These birds are too heavy and unwieldy to rise from the ground, but with the help of their wings run so swiftly, that the English could never come near enough to shoot at them. The Indians, commonly, by holding a large plume of feathers before them, and walking gently ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... front of which again protruded two shafts, straight as Corinthian pillars, and equally substantial, embracing an uncommonly fine mule, one of the largest and handsomest of the species which I had seen. The harnessing partook of the same kind of unwieldy strength and solidity, and was richly embossed with silver and dirt. Astride on this mulo sat a household negro, with a huge thong of bullock's hide in one hand, and the reins in the other. In this ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the river at this season, and to the rapids, the steam-boat is unable to go up the whole way to Peterborough, and a scow or rowboat, as it is sometimes termed—a huge, unwieldy, flat- bottomed machine—meets the passengers at a certain part of the river, within sight of a singular pine tree on the right bank; this is termed the "Yankee bonnet," from the fancied resemblance of the topmost boughs to a sort of ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... attacks, as is usual in such cases, were not conducted with sufficient energy and decision, and Bosquet was thus enabled to perceive the real intentions of the enemy upon the English portion of the line and move to its assistance. Moreover, the main body of the Russians moved in too heavy and unwieldy masses, which exposed them to terrible losses, and rendered impossible a rapid and effective deployment of their numerical force. The same criticism is applicable to their formation at ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... 21st, the English ships commenced their attacks upon their unwieldy antagonists. "The Spanish ships," says Motley, "seemed arrayed for a pageant in honor of a victory won. Arranged in the form of a crescent whose horns were seven miles asunder, those gilded towers and floating castles, with their brilliant standards and martial ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... of Saints' Lives in the Corpus and Ashmole MSS., the Harleian MS. 2277, &c. will repeat the Laud set, our No. 87, with additions, and in right order. (The foundation MS. (Laud 108) had to be printed first, to prevent quite unwieldy collations.) The Supplementary Lives from the Vernon and other MSS. will form one or two ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... go." Having dropped to the raft, and seized a short paddle, he joined Joe and the engineer in forcing the unwieldy raft away from the side of the ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... Italian birth ceased. Trajan himself was a Spaniard, and after him not only foreigners of every European race, but even Orientals and Africans were invested with the imperial purple, and the huge empire over which they ruled was one unwieldy mass of heterogeneous materials. The literary influence of the capital was not felt in the interior portions of the Roman dominions. Schools were established in the very heart of nations just emerging from barbarism; and though the blessings of civilization ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... belted on sword and pistols and wrapping the other things in one of the boat-cloaks, I strapped the unwieldy bundle to my shoulders and taking up the gun, scrambled ashore, and having found my ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... swiftly with the wind abeam, had now drawn abreast of her unwieldy adversary. The merchant captain, apparently, finding himself out-speeded and being unable to spare his gun crews to trim sails, had put the head of his ship into the wind, where she stood, with canvas flapping, her bows offering a steady mark to ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... League, Alone as they. About them frisking playd 340 All Beasts of th' Earth, since wilde, and of all chase In Wood or Wilderness, Forrest or Den; Sporting the Lion rampd, and in his paw Dandl'd the Kid; Bears, Tygers, Ounces, Pards Gambold before them, th' unwieldy Elephant To make them mirth us'd all his might, and wreathd His Lithe Proboscis; close the Serpent sly Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine His breaded train, and of his fatal guile Gave proof unheeded; others on the grass 350 Coucht, and now fild with pasture gazing sat, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the real views of the Committee. They claim to have drawn up a body of improved marginal references, to have wholly removed archaisms, to have supplied running headings, to have modified what they consider unwieldy paragraphs, to have lightened what they regard as clumsy punctuation, and by typographical arrangements, such as by leaving a line blank, to have indicated the main transitions of thought in the Epistles and Apocalypse. These and other characteristics will be found specified in the American ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... outrageous mirth, he was hourly brought to the very verge of despair. Constitutionally he was lachrymose; tears came from him freely when distress had reached a climax, and the contrast between his unwieldy form and this weakness of demeanour supplied inexhaustible occasion for mirth throughout the school. His hours of freedom ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... Cousin Ann generously managed to defray the expense of sending on to them the mantel ornaments and the Dirty Boy. "I know what your home is to you," she used to say to them, "and how you must miss your ornaments. If I have chanced to give you things as unwieldy as they are handsome, I ought to see that you have them around you without trouble ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... among the things gigantic. But the gigantic things were no longer supreme. Nature had made an error, and was busy rectifying it. The dinosaurs—all the giant reptiles—were now sorely pressed. Brute strength, giant size and tiny brain could not win this struggle. The huge unwieldy things were being beaten. The smaller animals, birds and reptiles were more agile, more resourceful, and began to dominate. Against the giants, and against all hostility of environment, they survived. And the giants went down ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... large," says Burney, "and he was somewhat corpulent and unwieldy in his motions; but his countenance, which I remember as perfectly as that of any man I saw but yesterday, was full of fire and dignity; and such as impressed ideas of superiority and genius. He was impetuous, rough, and peremptory in his manners ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... jewel; ours the glory Of those great Soldiers who by sea and land Scattered the foemen to the winds of heaven, First in the files of time. And though our mother, Our Athens, sank, crushed by the might of Rome, What is Rome now?—An Empire rent in twain; An Empire sinking 'neath the unwieldy weight Of its own power; an Empire where the Senate Ranks lower than the Circus, and a wanton Degrades the Imperial throne. But though to its fall The monster totters, this our Cherson keeps The bravery of ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... when an extraordinary figure, rising from the grain beyond, began to gesticulate to him wildly. Checking the driver of the first carriage, Clarence bore down upon the stranger. To his amazement it was Jim Hooker. Mounted on a peaceful, unwieldy plough horse, he was nevertheless accoutred and armed after his most extravagant fashion. In addition to a heavy rifle across his saddle-bow he was weighted down with a knife and revolvers. Clarence was in no mood for trifling, and almost rudely ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... guardians, the big boat moved across the lake to Leoni. How a little hamlet on a Bavarian lake got that Tuscan-sounding name I cannot tell; but Leoni it is. The big boat was a long time crossing; the lake here is about three miles broad, and these heavy barges are unwieldy and heavy to move, even though they are towed and ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... But the King further showed his liking for the place—and his scant regard for his subjects—by making it the centre of a Chase, having a large extent of the land on either side of the river afforested and enclosed with palings so that, though growing corpulent and unwieldy, he might yet be able to indulge in his favourite pastime ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... influenced by Pope and Thomson, and translated the Seasons, when he had finished his Irdisches Vergnuegen in Gott. This unwieldy work, insipid and prosaic as it is, was still a literary achievement, thanks to the dignity of the subject and the high seriousness of its aim, at a time when frivolity was the fashion in poetry. Its long pious descriptions of natural phenomena have none of the imposing flow of Thomson's ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... do, then will we speak, Yet in our ashes cold does fire reek.* *smoke Four gledes* have we, which I shall devise**, *coals ** describe Vaunting, and lying, anger, covetise*. *covetousness These foure sparks belongen unto eld. Our olde limbes well may be unweld*, *unwieldy But will shall never fail us, that is sooth. And yet have I alway a coltes tooth, As many a year as it is passed and gone Since that my tap of life began to run; For sickerly*, when I was born, anon *certainly Death drew the tap of life, and let it gon: And ever since hath ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Deerslayer was as good as his word. In less than five minutes after this speech was made, the whole party was in the ark, and in motion. There was a gentle breeze from the north, and boldly hoisting the sail, the young man laid the head of the unwieldy craft in such a direction, as, after making a liberal but necessary allowance for leeway, would have brought it ashore a couple of miles down the lake, and on its eastern side. The sailing of the ark was never very swift, though, floating ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... was fond of having her house well arranged, discovered, to the amazement of her acquaintance, the art of making all her servants keep every thing in its place. Even in the kitchen, from the most minute article to the most unwieldy, every thing was invariably to be found in its allotted station; the servants were thought miracles of obedience; but, in fact, they obeyed because it was the easiest thing they could possibly do. Order was made more ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... has promoted me. He says that Francis Charles is too heavy for the mild climate, and unwieldy in emergencies." ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... manner. All at once he became conscious of a huge object, scarcely thirty yards distant, whose attention he had already attracted. Mr. Onthank had been long enough in California to recognize in the huge, unwieldy figure—a grizzly bear! ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of books of reference, and as knowledge increases, and the books which impart it to readers become unwieldy from their multitude, there are sure to be forthcoming those who will reduce the facts into a handy form. I have gathered in the following pages the titles of some of the best books of reference which are to be obtained. Many, if not all of these, are to be found in that magnificent library ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... quantity. In the last half dozen years there had not been three casualties. For one thing, he chose his men with infinite care; in the second place, he saw to it that they remained in harmony, and to that end he was careful never to be tempted into forming an unwieldy crew, no matter how large the prize. Of the present organization each was an expert. Larry la Roche had been a counterfeiter and was a consummate penman. His forgeries were works of art. "Have you ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... air-tight barrels, one of which was lodged under each corner of the float, was such that with Tom and his machine upon the planks the whole platform would float six or eight inches free of the water. To pole or row this unwieldy raft in such a flood would have been quite out of the question, and even in carrying out the plan which Tom now thought furnished his only hope, he knew that the sole chance of success lay in starting right. If the float, through premature ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... had no time to take much notice of these pretty compliments. It was a race for life and freedom. Looking round furtively once more I could distinguish my pursuers; I could see their long assegais; I could hear the snorting of their unwieldy horses, the clattering of their swords. These unpleasant combinations were enough to strike terror into the ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... shame. He can curse, and swear, and break things. "He is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils." He fears no consequences, and can accomplish impossibilities. If he is a cripple, he fancies he can dance like a satyr; if he is slow and unwieldy, he can run like a hart; if he is weak and feeble in strength, he can lift like Samson, and fight like Hercules; if he is poor and pennyless, he is rich as Croesus on his throne, and has money to lend. This is all a correct representation. It is what happens universally with ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... daggers. Against these monsters, or rather against the imagination of his troops, he condescended to use some extraordinary precautions of fire and a ditch, of iron spikes and a rampart of bucklers; but the event taught the Mongols to smile at their own fears; and as soon as these unwieldy animals were routed, the inferior species (the men of India) disappeared from the field. Timur made his triumphal entry into the capital of Hindustan, and admired, with a view to imitate, the architecture of the stately mosque; but ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... atlas of those days I think you would be rather surprised, and we are all convinced now that geography is by no means an exact science. The little girl and her father studied it all out. There was big, unwieldy Oregon. There were British America and Russian America. There were Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen, and though there were dreams of an open Polar Sea, no one was disturbing it. We had a great American Desert, ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Daniele in 1494 when he returned from an early visit to Venice, where he had been apprenticed to Cima. He was appointed to decorate S. Antonino. His early work there is hard and coarse, ill-drawn, the figures unwieldy and shapeless, and the colour dusky and uniform; but owing to the Turkish raid, he had to take flight, and it was many a year before the monks gained sufficient courage and saved enough money to continue the embellishment of their church. In the meantime, Pellegrino's years had been spent partly ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... over life and death, over a province as large as France, Germany, and Spain together! He had already served the Khedive for three years in the unhealthy Equatorial Province, and now he was to govern for nearly three years more this larger and still more unwieldy province, his reign only ceasing ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... will be a dear year, the blade of the corn grows withersones [contrary to the course of the sun], and when it grows sonegatis about [with the course of the sun] it will be good cheap year."[2] The following is another apt illustration of the power, which has been translated from the unwieldy Lowland Scotch account of the trial of Bessie Roy in 1590. The Dittay charged her thus: "You are indicted and accused that whereas, when you were dwelling with William King in Barra, about twelve years ago, or thereabouts, and having gone into the field to pluck lint ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... Dyrrhachium had thus borne not much immediate fruit for the victors. Pompeius with his unwieldy army and his numerous cavalry had not been able to follow his versatile enemy into the mountains; Caesar like Calvinus had escaped from pursuit, and the two stood united and in full security in Thessaly. Perhaps it would have been the best course, if Pompeius had ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... no longer loaded by the bloodshot symptoms of an over-fed and plethoric constitution, was now clear and intellectual, and there appeared to be an unencumbered activity about his jaws that argued a vigor and quickness of execution in matters of a sumptuary character, which, when gross and unwieldy from luxury, they never could reach. He was by no means in his usual spirits, it is true, but then he was in much better health, and a vague report of something in the shape of a loan to the clergy, to the tune of a million, gave him ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... after all his lavish cups Is dry, and then is sober; so at length, When you awake from this lascivious dream, Repentance then will follow, like the sting Plac'd in the adder's tail. Wretched are princes When fortune blasteth but a petty flower Of their unwieldy crowns, or ravisheth But one pearl from their scepter; but alas! When they to wilful shipwreck lose good fame, All princely ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... arduous toil of many patient years was about to be rewarded. The airship was within sight of home when it had to descend owing to the development of another motor fault. But as it approached the ground, Nature, as if infuriated at the conquest, rose up in rebellion. A sudden squall struck the unwieldy monster. Within a few moments it became unmanageable, and through some inscrutable cause, it caught fire, with the result that within a few moments it was reduced to a tangled mass of ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... immortal Pickwick can hold its own with any modern of its "weight, age, and size." From the splendid yet unwieldy edition de luxe, all but Bible-like in its proportions, to the one penny edition sold on barrows in Cheapside, every form ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... described as His Majesty's Council for Virginia, had become a large and unwieldy body, with many of its members inactive. Its influence on the conduct of Virginia's affairs was now decidedly less important than in the earlier years. According to the Orders and Constitutions, no one "under the degree of a Lord or principall ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... Glorvina, "I believe you stole a spark from heaven to give animation to your idol." He thought the inferiority of Ida was owing to its author's luxurious surroundings. "I cannot conceive why the brain should not get fat and unwieldy, as well as any other part of the human frame. Some of our best poets have written in paroxysms of hunger, and I really believe that Addison would have had more point if he had had less victuals; and if you do not restrict yourself to a sheep's trotter and spruce beer, your style will ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various |
