"Lout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ellen when, after more debating, the signature was finally inscribed, "I'm clean beat out. Why, I could have deeded away the whole United States in the time it's taken this lout of a boy to scribble his name. Is it any wonder that with only a stupid idiot like this for help, my garden's always behind other folks', an' my chores ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... they were truly the Lady Mirdath and her maid; and so I took chance when they had danced somewhat my way, to step over to them, and ask boldly for a dance. But, indeed, the tall one answered, simpering, that she was promised; and immediately gave her hand to a great hulking farmer-lout, and went round the green with him; and well punished she was for her waywardness; for she had all her skill to save her pretty feet from his loutish stampings; and very glad she was to meet the end of ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... by repeating my professions and again reminding him of my taking him up at Paris, I was successful. Though I had more trouble in gaining the compliance of this lout than would have been sufficient, were I prime minister, and did I bribe with any thing like the same comparative liberality, to gain ten worthy members of parliament, though five knights of the shire ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... actual outrage and injury in his house and hers, it was not because she did not provoke him, for there was nothing in his wife which Gervase hated so heartily, resented so keenly, as her refraining from contradicting him. But below the grossness and sin of the poor lout and caitiff there was a fund of sullen, latent manliness and kindness, which held him back from insulting the defenceless woman—for all her pride and purity—who was his wife, just as it had held him back from dallying with and caressing her ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... ever wee had measur'd halfe a mile of our way, he gave me over in the plain field, protesting he would not hold out with me; for, indeed, my pace in dauncing is not ordinary. As he and I were parting, a lusty country lasse being among the people, cal'd him faint-hearted lout, saying, "If I had begun to daunce, I would have held out one myle, though it had cost my life." At which words many laughed. "Nay," saith she, "if the dauncer will lend me a leash of his belles, I'le ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... big lout of fifteen, who already boasted of his love-affairs, learned German, and was to be a gentleman like his father—there he lay on the bottom-boards in the bow ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... clad in motley coat, the footman neat Is dangling after Miss with shuffling feet, Bearing in state to church her book of pray'r, Or the light pocket she disdains to wear;{1} Or in a parlour snug, 'the powdered lout The tea and bread and butter hands about. Where are the women, whose less nervous hands Might fit these lighter tasks, which pride demands? Some feel the scorn that poverty attends, Or pine in meek dependance on their friends; Some patient ply the needle day by day, Poor half-paid ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... proficiency in the work. But as he grew toward manhood, he became, as the old man called it, "trifling"; a word which bore with it in the local dialect no suggestion of levity or vivacity, for Luke Matchin was as dark and lowering a lout as you would readily find. But it meant that he became more and more unpunctual, did his work worse month by month, came home later at night, and was continually seen, when not in the shop, with a gang ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... know I am, would have cried shame on me if I had lingered behind. I told her that if I stayed it would be for her sake, and you should have seen how she flouted me, saying that she would have no tall lout hiding behind her petticoats, and that if I stayed, it should not be as her man. And now I must be off to my supper, or I shall find that there is not ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... my tongue: Since truth must out, I own it wrong." On this, a hue and cry arose, As if the beasts were all his foes. A wolf, haranguing lawyer-wise, Denounced the ass for sacrifice,— The bald-pate, scabby, ragged lout, By whom the plague had come, no doubt. His fault was judged a hanging crime. What! eat another's grass? Oh, shame! The noose of rope, and death sublime, For that offence were all too tame! And soon poor Grizzle ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... ye, it was for twa shillin' a week that I first worked. I was a strappin' lout of a boy then, fit to work harder than I did, and earn more, and ever and again I'd tell them at some new mill I was past fourteen, and they'd put me to work at full time. But I could no hide myself awa' from the inspector ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... standing between those two, he seemed like a country lout between confederate sharpers. It struck me that she let me see, made me see, that she and Gurnard had an understanding, made manifest to me by glances that passed when the Duc had his ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... therefore, although he seemed to be a good fellow, and he was sorry for him, Dirk van Goorl must be got out of the way, since he was convinced that Lysbeth was one of those stubborn-natured creatures who would probably decline to marry himself until this young Leyden lout had vanished. And yet he did not wish to be mixed up with duels, if for no other reason because in a duel the unexpected may always happen, and that would be a poor end. Certainly also he did not wish to be mixed up with murder; ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... comfortable perhaps—or perhaps the right man hasn't turned up. Florrie Hensor is several cuts above a malingering lout like Steadbolt. Well there, poor devil! Maybe, it's not unnatural that I should feel a sneaking sympathy for an unsuccessful lover. That abominable lie was a bit too strong though—and before you! The man must have been downright mad from drink and fury and bitterness. It—it's ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... that his mynde settyth god truly to serue And his sayntes: this worlde settynge at nought Shall for rewarde euerlastynge ioy deserue But in this worlde, he that settyth his thought All men to please, and in fauour to be brought Must lout and lurke, flater, lawde, and lye: And cloke a knauys counseyll, ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... suddenly sharpening his critical faculties. A thing struck him that had never happened to strike him before. What was that great strapping Scollay fellow doing at home on a small croft where he was quite superfluous, when his country needed every man? And why did the lout stare and then laugh? Considering what a vigilant eye was watching him behind Mr. Hobhouse's glasses, it seemed to me unwise as ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... mind wandered in thought and he forgot his trust. The good wife returned, found the cakes burning, and the guest dreaming by the fireside; she lost her temper, and expressed a decided opinion about the lazy lout who was ready enough to eat, but less ready to work. In the seventeenth century there was found in the marshes here a jewel that Alfred had lost: it is of gold and enamel, bearing words signifying, "Alfred had me wrought." ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... soldiers. At one time a British officer wrote a farce entitled, "The Blockade of Boston," to be played on a given evening. It was a burlesque upon Washington and the American army. It represented the commander-in-chief of the American army as an awkward lout, equipped with a huge wig, and a long, rusty sword, attended by a country booby as orderly sergeant, in a rustic garb, with an old fire-lock ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... lord outbroke in one sudden curse like a blast from a horn. He tore his sword from its black sheath; he called to the hovering landlord: "A sword there, for this lout!" He turned to the lady, with a laugh that chilled her heart, and said: "You put much labour upon me, madame. It seems I must find you a husband and make you a ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... front of Silas's cottage, he hated the Hamleys and Roger especially, with a very choice and particular hatred. 'That prig,' as hereafter he always designated Roger—'he shall pay for it yet,' he said to himself by way of consolation, after the father and son had left him. 'What a lout it is!'—watching the receding figure. 'The old chap has twice as much spunk,' as the squire tugged at his bridle-reins. 'The old mare could make her way better without being led, my fine fellow. But I see through your dodge. You're afraid of your old father turning back and getting ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... topped A moorland slope, and met the bitter blast, So cutting that their ears it almost cropped; And rain began to fall extremely fast. A broken sign-post left them in great doubt About two roads; and, when an hour was passed, They learned their error from a lucid lout; Soon after, one by one, their lamps ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... could do was to put on the rough jerkin of a laboring man, and set to cleaving firewood in the courtyard with the scolding assistance of a maid-servant. When the troopers entered to search for the master of the house, they heard the maid vehemently "flyting" the great hulking lout for his awkwardness, and threatening to "draw a stick across his back" if he did not ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... luncheon; and in the clash and crisis, without any one's quite knowing how it happened, it turned out that Mrs. Evelyn had been so imprudent as to sanction an attachment between her daughter and that great lout of a young doctor, Lady Fordham's brother! Not only the M.P., but all the family shook the head and bemoaned the connection, for though it was to be a long engagement and a great secret, everybody found it out. Lucas had long made up his mind ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to show abject respect. When one of the boyards complained that "The grand duke decided all the questions, shut up with two others in the bedchamber," the noble was promptly arrested, condemned to death, and executed. He interrupted the objection of a high noble with, "Be silent, lout!" His court displayed great splendor, but it was semi-Asiatic. The throne was guarded by young nobles called ryndis, dressed in long caftans of white satin, high caps of white ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... too partick'ler," rejoined Captain Snaggs; "fur this 'll be the last dinner thet air conceited darkey, Sam, 'll cook fur ye, Flinders. He goes in the fo'c's'le to-morrow, an' this hyar lout of a stooard shall take his place ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... smoking their pipes, and leathery-faced women on household duties intent, with a score or so of little cotton-headed children running about over the manure pile in the neighborhood of the barn, to keep the pigs company; here and there a strapping lout of a boy swinging on a gate and whistling for his own amusement; while cows, sheep, goats, chickens, and other domestic animals and birds browse, nibble, and peck all over the yard in such a lazy and rural manner as ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Carmen—Cadwallader with Inez. The officers are in their uniforms—a costume for equestrian exercise not quite shipshape as they would phrase it. On horseback in a naval uniform! It would not do riding thus on an English road; there the veriest country lout would criticise it. But different in California, where all ride, gentle or simple, in dresses of every conceivable cut and fashion, with no fear of being ridiculed therefor. None need attach to the dress ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... at the door of the Fortune, where we shall have matchless Will speaking for himself.—Goblin, and you other lout, leave the horses to the grooms, and make way for ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... him a cream cheese for his services. In the evening Jack took the cheese and went home with it on his head. By the time he got home the cheese was completely spoilt, part of it being lost and part matted with his hair. "You stupid lout," said his mother, "you should have carried it very carefully ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... a compliment, as well as a curiosity. Sally hesitated. She had planned to see Toby; but if Toby was going to be a lout she might just as well ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... "but not to-day. We will wait until everybody has had time to get completely sober again. I do not choose that the lady should be subjected to the annoyance of encountering, and perhaps being insulted by, some half-drunken lout. But you will not require all the boats, I suppose, so you had better send off the smallest one, with a pair of oars, that we may have the means of going to and from the ship and the shore at our own pleasure, and ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... though he cared little enough about Andor at one time. Andor was his only brother's only child, and I suppose Pali bacsi[3] was suddenly struck with the idea that he really had no one to leave his hoardings to. He was always a fool and a lout. If Andor had lived it would have been all right. I think Pali bacsi was quite ready to do something really handsome for him. Now that Andor is dead he has no one; and when he dies his money all goes to the government. It is a pity," ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and old More worth commanded than Peru, Our Princess bartered wealth untold, For the Magician's lamp quite new: So when this change the eunuch made In scorn the rabble 'gan to shout; Beholding such a silly trade, They deemed the wizard fool and lout. ...
— Aladdin or The Wonderful Lamp • Anonymous
... freemasonry requisite to bring him acquainted with them; and it lighted up his face with a pleasant surprise to see two such beautiful specimens of boyhood and girlhood in this dismal, spider-haunted house, and under the guardianship of such a savage lout as the grim Doctor. He seemed particularly struck by the intelligence and sensibility of Ned's face, and met his eyes with a glance that Ned long afterwards remembered; but yet he seemed quite as much interested by ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... confines wander out, Where the old gun, bucolic lout, Commits all day his murderous crimes: Though cherries ripe are sweet, no doubt, Sweeter thy song ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... hoddy-doddy[obs3], noddy, nonny, noodle, nizy[obs3], owl; goose, goosecap[obs3]; imbecile; gaby[obs3]; radoteur[obs3], nincompoop, badaud[obs3], zany; trifler, babbler; pretty fellow; natural, niais[obs3]. child, baby, infant, innocent, milksop, sop. oaf, lout, loon, lown[obs3], dullard, doodle, calf, colt, buzzard, block, put, stick, stock, numps[obs3], tony. bull head, dunderhead, addlehead[obs3], blockhead, dullhead[obs3], loggerhead, jolthead[obs3], jolterhead[obs3], beetlehead[obs3], beetlebrain, grosshead[obs3], muttonhead, noodlehead, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... leave it, he proceeds to recommend, in place of venison for squires' tables, "the bodies of young lads and maidens not exceeding fourteen or under twelve." Amiable humourist! laughing castigator of morals! There was a process well known and practised in the Dean's gay days: when a lout entered the coffee-house, the wags proceeded to what they called "roasting" him. This is roasting a subject with a vengeance. The Dean had a native genius for it. As the "Almanach des Gourmands" says, On ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... was a Grammatophyllum with bulbs some times over eight feet in length. The length of the name is certainly suitable for so large an orchid. I saw plenty of water-birds, including white egrets and a long-necked diver which is called the "snake-bird," owing to its long neck projecting lout of the water and thus greatly resembling a snake. I shot several of each kind of bird, plucking the fine plumes from the backs of the egrets. We ate some of the divers that evening and found them first-class food, tasting much like goose. We later in the day disturbed ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... cowardice forced him to endure. The timid lecturer, angry at the poor figure he had cut on the platform, was glad to take it out of young Gourlay for the wrongdoing of the class. Gourlay was their scapegoat. The lecturer had no longer over a hundred men to deal with, but one lout only, sullen yet shrinking in the room before him. Instead of coming to the point at once, he played with his victim. It was less from intentional cruelty than from an instinctive desire to recover his lost feeling of superiority. The class was his master, but ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... a lout and a lubber, And the life of a sailor he dares not, When the snow-crested surges caress us And sweep us away with their kisses, He bides in a berth that is warmer, Embraced in the arms of his lady; And lightly she lulls him to slumber, ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... off, you drunken lout, you! How dare you lay a hand upon my guest. Know you not that he who harms the guest of ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... pathway to his throne—and he forgot the matron's pies. And then the cowherd's wife came in; she smelled the smoke, she gave a shout; she biffed him with the rolling pin, and cried: "Ods fish, you useless lout! You are not worth the dynamite 'twould take to blow you off the map! Your head is not upholstered right—you are a worthless ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... dared use that last epithet in his hearing—was getting on toward sixty, but was still a muscular and rather handsome man, with a weather-beaten face, blood-shot eyes, a gray mustache as stiff and long and prickly as a tom-cat's whiskers, and the general bullying air of an uneducated lout who had money enough to live on without working. People had dubbed him el Callao because at least a dozen times every day he told the story of that famous battle for the Peruvian seaport—the last that Spain relinquished ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... If I want spirit, it will be for drinking. [MORRIS goes out. Spirit or no, drinking's better than talking. Who was the sickly fellow to invent That crazy notion spirit, now, I wonder? But who'd have thought a burly lout like Morris Would join the brabble? Sure he'll have in him A pint more blood than I have; and he's all For loving girls with words, three ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... expert physiognomist, and singled out an unsophisticated-looking giant, who was patrolling a certain beat, as the best man among the line of sentries on whom to practise an imposition. This individual was evidently a good-natured lout, not long in the service, and very much resembling our conception of "Jonas Chuzzlewit," in respect to his having been "put away and forgotten for half a century." It is only necessary to add that his owners "had stuck a musket in his hand, and placed him on guard." Yet there was some ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... all lies, gentlemen! There, gentlemen, he's a most dishonorable man himself, gentlemen; he isn't worth your notice! Bah, my boy, what a lout you are! Well, I never knew you—and not for any blessings on earth would I have anything ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... that," he growled, and I saw the uselessness of trying to make the lout see reason. I now began to fear that he would tell Thirkle what I had said ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... is the kind of lout With Strephon for your foe, no doubt, We do not care a fig about! A fearful prospect opens out, We cannot say And who shall say What evils may What evils may Result in consequence. Result ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... changes are against us. But with Mrs. Milroy threatening me on one side, and Mr. Midwinter on the other, the worst of all risks to run is the risk of losing time. Young Armadale has hinted already, as well as such a lout can hint, at a private interview! Miss Milroy's eyes are sharp, and the nurse's eyes are sharper; and I shall lose my place if either of them find me out. No matter! I must take my chance, and give him the interview. Only let me get him alone, only let me escape the prying eyes of the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... good-looking fellow, Lothair," said St. Aldegonde; "or is it the dress that turns them out such swells? I feel quite a lout by some of ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... big-boned and deep-chested, and had nervous as well as muscular strength. The timidity in him was strange in such a man. What could it spring from? It was not like ordinary shyness, the gaucherie of a big, awkward lout unaccustomed to woman's society but able to be at his ease and boisterous in the midst of a crowd of men. Domini thought that he would be timid even of men. Yet it never struck her that he might be a coward, unmanly. Such a quality would have sickened ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the third of May, Noel and I, drifting about the town, heard many a wide-mouthed lout let go his joke and his laugh, and then move tot he next group, proud of his wit and happy, to work it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... came upon a brazen-looking woman with a black eye, who answered the question of the officer, "Where did you get that shiner?" with a laugh. "I ran up against the fist of me man," she said. Her "man," a big, sullen lout, sat by, dumb. The woman answered for him that ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... Well! am I to be kept waiting forever? You were quicker in obeying my caprices yesterday. Get up, you muddy lout, and let us kill each other with ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... of Roister Doister somewhat to express, That ye may esteem him after his worthiness, In these twenty towns, and seek them throughout, Is not the like stock whereon to graff a lout. All the day long is he facing and craking[49] Of his great acts in fighting and fray-making; But when Roister Doister is put to his proof, To keep the Queen's peace is more for his behoof. If any woman smile, or cast on him an eye, Up is he to the hard ears ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... spend the remnant of his days in the home of his forefathers, and to lay his old bones in the family vault; but the place was poisoned to him for evermore, he told Angela. He could not stay where he and his had been held in highest honour, to have his daughter pointed at by every grinning lout in hob-nailed shoes, and scorned by the neighbouring quality. He only waited till Denzil Warner should be pronounced out of danger and on the high-road to recovery, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... through with much exactness and dexterity. But when Albert arose from his knee, on which he had rested during the accomplishment of this task, the manner of the companions was on the sudden entirely changed towards each other. The honourable Master Kerneguy, from a cubbish lout of a raw Scotsman, seemed to have acquired at once all the grace and ease of motion and manner, which could be given by an acquaintance of the earliest and most familiar kind with the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Miller, in some anger. "An' 't will take more 'n you an' that moon-faced lout to put them things on the man, or I'm ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... you! "sportsman" from suburban alleys, Stretched under seaweed in the treacherous punt; Knows every lazy, shiftless lout that sallies Forth to waste ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... lout. He means, you grace, the banquet waits without. If at our humble board you'll deign ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... Brown, or Mazzini. When a man abandons his business or job and complacently leaves the clothing of his children to wife or neighbors in order to drink flip and talk politics, ordinary folk are content to call him a lazy lout, ne'er-do-well, worthless fellow, or scamp. Samuel Adams was not a scamp. He might have been no more than a ne'er-do-well, perhaps, if cosmic forces had not opportunely provided him with an occupation which his contemporaries and posterity could regard as a high service to humanity. In his ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... brilliant enclosure, enjoying the silence of the groves, listening to the murmuring waters and the rustling leaves, admiring the blue gaps outlined above my head by clouds of pearly sheen and gold, wandering fancy free in dreams of my future, I heard some lout or other, who had arrived the day before from Paris, playing on a violin with the violence of a man who has nothing else to do. I would not wish for my worst enemy to hear anything so utterly in discord with the sublime harmony of nature. If the distant notes of Roland's Horn had ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the table with a bold step; there was nothing now of the country lout about him; on the contrary, he moved with remarkable dignity, and bore himself so well that many a pair of feminine eyes watched him kindly, as he took his ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... blew and white: Or, as a line doth guide, So thou doest leuell slide, And throw'st into the sea thy mite? Is't, that with twisted line, The Angler doth vntwine The fishes life, by giuing breath. Or, as the threshing lout, Rusheth his Lyners out, So Lyner on his course rusheth: Or, as some puppy seat, Lineth a mastiue great, And getteth whelps of mongrell kinde: Lyner, the sea so lines, And streame with waue ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... told him how it all happened. When the pope heard these words he actually shook all over with greediness. Going home, he did nothing by night and by day but think, "That such a wretched lout of a moujik should have come in for such a lump of money! Is there any way of tricking him now, and getting this pot of money out of him?" He told his wife about it, and he and she discussed the matter together, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... pow'r; White is his beard, and blossoming-white his crown, Shapely his limbs, his countenance is proud. Should any seek, no need to point him out. The messengers, on foot they get them down, And in salute full courteously they lout. ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... the left, dipping to the south, the steep grey crags, curve after curve. The streets were alive with an abundance of merry young sailors and soldiers, brisk, handsome boys, with the quiet air of discipline that converts a country lout into a self-respecting citizen. An old bronzed sergeant led a child with one hand, and with the other tried to obey her shrill directions about whirling a skipping-rope, so that she might skip beside him; he looked at us with a half-proud, half-shamefaced smile, calling down ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of it. That lout comes to a knowledge of his wants too late. If they promoted and offered me the command in India to-morrow—'My lord struck the arm of his chair. 'I live at Steignton henceforth; my wife is at a seaside place eastward. She left the jewel-case when on her journey through London for safety; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... or more, nor are they set down, as of custom, on palimpsest: regal paper, new boards, unused bosses, red ribands, lead-ruled parchment, and all most evenly pumiced. But when thou readest these, that refined and urbane Suffenus is seen on the contrary to be a mere goatherd or ditcher-lout, so great and shocking is the change. What can we think of this? he who just now was seen a professed droll, or e'en shrewder than such in gay speech, this same becomes more boorish than a country boor immediately ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... lout—drive on. We've done with you for the present. But, remember, not a word of this to the population of Deadwood, if you intend to ever make another trip over this ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... whole life, excepting on the occasions of his baptism and marriage. He was known as Jack's Tom. If he, in his turn, happened to have a son whom he chose to name Henry, the youth was known as Jack's Tom's Harry. Our friend Tommy's father had been called Hob, and hence the name of the ill-tempered lout who was gazing on the unsullied sea. Tommy watched the green water breaking over the brown sand, and far out at sea he saw the thick haze still brooding low. He knew the evening would be fine, and he knew that he would have a good basket for next day's market. He put his hands in his pockets, ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... above would have made chapters of this); the dramatic and risky passages at the castle en Barrois; the contrast of Katherine's passion and Gerard's sluggishness; and the fashion in which this latter at once brings on the lout's defeat and saves the lady from danger at his hands—all this is novel-matter of almost the first class as regards incident, with no lack of character-openings to boot. Nor could anybody want a better "curtain" than the falling back of the scorned and baffled false lover, the concert of the minstrels, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... he had a liking for my gift of ready speech, for his own ideas came with difficulty, and it pleased and astonished him to hear me pouring out my views. Indeed, over there I was, I think, even more talkative than with Parload, though to the world at large I was a shy young lout. "You ought to write it out for the newspapers," he used to say. "That's what you ought to do. I ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... "Idle lout," she cried, "thou couldst not keep an eye to the bread although thou wouldst be glad to fill thy belly with it. Play another trick of the kind and I will thwack thee on ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... was but harsh to those whom he liked not, and from the first he scorned the young man. "For none," said he, "but a low-born lout would crave meat and drink when he might have asked for a horse and arms." But Sir Launcelot and Sir Gawain took the youth's part. Neither knew him for Gareth of the Orkneys, but both believed him to be a youth of good promise who, for his own reasons, would pass in disguise ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... all about it," he said; "let go that snivelling lout's arm and do what you're told. Let the boy alone, do you hear?" added he, addressing Reginald, "and take yourself off. Come ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... earth—(Look in the index, you lout! Oh, won't I give it to you afterwards!)" once more began the wretched Bramble. He got no farther. Even had he remembered the words his voice could never have risen above the laughter, which continued as long as he remained on ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... the ensanguined corse, in sorrow drowned, The damsel throws herself, in her despair, And shrieks so lout that wood and plain resound For many miles about; nor does she spare Bosom or cheek; but still, with cruel wound, One and the other smites the afflicted fair; And wrongs her curling lock of golden grain, Aye calling on the well-loved ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... and smoked and pored over a pocket-map of the department, a lout of a lad shambled out of the auberge wearing a fixed scowl in no degree mitigated by the sight of the customer. In the dooryard, which was also the stableyard, the boy caught and saddled a dreary animal, apparently a ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... grown good for nothing, and ought to be sent off, as I have often told my master; but the lout is as obedient to him as possible—he knows the length of his foot—while to every one else he is cross-grained, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... trifle more liquor, if you please. Thank you. Yes, I used to call her the wild plum. Sweet thing, and I had no idea that she was married until her lout of a husband came down to the landing with a double-barrel gun. Ah, Lord, if she had been single and worth money I could have made her very happy. Fate hasn't always been my ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... flirted through the window with a handsome but ill-tempered looking man on a fine horse, who praised her 'golden locks,' as he called them; and oddly enough, when Melchior said that the man was a lout, and that the locks in question were corkscrewy carrot shavings, she only seemed to like the man and his compliments the more. Meanwhile, the untidy brother pored over his book, or if he came to the window, it ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... gone, we all felt very blue; because he had been the joy of our lives. He left the command to Kleber—a great lout of a fellow who soon afterward lost the number of his mess. An Egyptian assassinated him. They put the murderer to death by making him sit on a bayonet; that's their way, down there, of guillotining a man. But he suffered so much that one of our soldiers felt sorry for ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... King's heralds scoured the land And the countries roundabout, Shouting aloud, at the King's command, A challenge to knave or lout, Prince or peasant,—"The mighty King Would have ye understand That he who shows him the strangest thing Shall ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... recognized Pelops a tall, red-headed, sandy lout, with a long neck and a prominent gullet-knot, came forward into sight from the direction of the entrance, apparently from beyond the fire. He put up his right hand and ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... yet. There's the Governor with an attack of gout, screaming like a wounded horse, and you nowhere to be found. Be off, man—away with you at speed to Government House! You're awaited, I tell you. Best lend him a horse, Kent, or the lout'll be ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... a broad back, long heels. Toddle-shankie also came sunburnt, having scarred feet, a broken nose, called Theow. Their children were named: the boys,—Sooty, Cowherd, Clumsy, Clod, Bastard, Mud, Log, Thickard, Laggard, Grey Coat, Lout, and Stumpy; the girls,—Loggie, Cloggie, Lumpy [ Leggie], Snub-nosie, Cinders, Bond-maid, Woody [ Peggy], Tatter-coatie, Crane-shankie. The story seems to present the three classes or ranks as founded in natural ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... and, with Phaldoni (her servant), constitutes the entire staff of the establishment. Whether or not Phaldoni has any other name I do not know, but at least he answers to this one, and every one calls him by it. A red-haired, swine-jowled, snub-nosed, crooked lout, he is for ever wrangling with Theresa, until the pair nearly come to blows. In short, life is not overly pleasant in this place. Never at any time is the household wholly at rest, for always there are people sitting up to play cards. Sometimes, too, certain things ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Side by side we fronted the group as if we might have been partners—which, in a measure, we were, but not wholy according to the lout Daniel's cackle and the suddenly interrogating countenances ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... part, I like those long trials of the old-fashioned chivalry. That lout of a young lord, who took offence because his sovereign-lady sent him down among the lions to fetch her glove, was, in my opinion, very impertinent, and a fool too. Doubtless the lady had in reserve for him some exquisite flower of love, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... arrive was the Satyr, strangely unreal for all that he cast a shadow and tossed the dust with his hoofs. After him from the brake came a monstrous lout, a thing of horse and rhinoceros, chewing a straw as it came; then appeared the Swine-woman and two Wolf-women; then the Fox-bear witch, with her red eyes in her peaked red face, and then others,—all hurrying eagerly. As they came forward they began to cringe towards Moreau and chant, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... to our group of anxious watchers. This time he had more friends. They swarmed respectfully but enthusiastically after him out of Hoffmuller's place, a dozen at least of our ne'er-do-wells. One of these, "Big Joe" Kestril, a genial lout of a section-hand, ostentatiously carried the bag and had an arm locked tenderly through one of the Colonel's. These two led the procession. It halted at the corner, where the Colonel began to read his Argus ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... have entertained thee Partly that I have need of such a youth That can with some discretion do my business, For 'tis no trusting to yond foolish lout; But chiefly for thy face and thy behaviour, Which, if my augury deceive me not, Witness good bringing up, fortune, and truth: Therefore, know thou, for this I entertain thee. Go presently, and take this ring ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... vice in this little band of Free State Boers and their leader, loyal to a lost cause? No, England, no! It is not you that shriek anathemas to the weeping skies because the foe dies hard. The gutter gamin and the brutal lout who never owned a soul fit to rise above the level of the kettle singing on the hearth may brand the name of Steyn and his stout burghers with infamy; but the clean-souled people of the Motherland, the people from whose ranks our greatest fighters ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... followed and he started for the sound of them on a run. A few minutes later three more pistol shots rang out, and Hale rushed to the river bank to find Mockaby stretched out on the ground, dying, and a mountaineer lout pointing after a man on horseback, who was making at a swift gallop for the mouth of the gap and ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... no and no. The reason was simply this, that a lout of a young man loved her. And so, instead of crying because she was the merest nobody, she must, forsooth, sail jauntily down Pall Mall, very trim as to her tackle and ticketed with the insufferable air of ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... there is another kind that goes under the name of slang, the offspring rather of mental sloth, and current chiefly among those idle, jocular classes to whom all art is a bugbear and a puzzle. There is a public for every one; the pottle-headed lout who in a moment of exuberance strikes on a new sordid metaphor for any incident in the beaten round of drunkenness, lubricity, and debt, can set his fancy rolling through the music-halls, and thence into the street, secure of applause and a numerous ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... have nothing to do with the quarrel; but if I were walking along the streets and saw a big lout pick a quarrel with a weaker one and then proceed to smash him up altogether, I fancy I should take a hand in the business. The Germans deliberately forced on the war. They knew perfectly well that when they put up a German Prince ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... Kabba Rega, the son of Kamrasi, the sixteenth king of Unyoro, of the Galla conquerors, a gauche, awkward, undignified lout of twenty years of age, who thought himself a great monarch. He was cowardly, cruel, cunning, and treacherous to the last degree. Not only had he ordered the destruction of his brother, Kabka Miro, but after ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... meant to do. He had made a will in that son's favor; he had gone as far as the Code will permit a man to go in the way of disinheriting one child to benefit another; and what was more, he had been putting by money for the past fifteen years to enable his lout of a son to buy back from Emile that portion of his father's estate which could not legally be ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... group in regard to matters which concern it much more vitally than they concern others, and government by a neutral authority embracing rival groups in all matters in which conflicting interests of groups come into play; lout always with the fixed principle that the functions of government are to be reduced to the bare minimum compatible with justice and the prevention of private violence. In such a world the present harmful ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... saying? Her poor coquetries did not deceive me, but she never meant them to deceive me. They accomplished, after all, just that for which she intended them. They deceived and maddened her half-drunken lout of a husband. Her dress, too, was something shameless. She wore above her scarlet skirt (which I verily believe was the same she had ridden in) a bodice of the same bright colour, low as a maid-of-honour's, that displayed her young neck and bust. About her neck she had fastened a string ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... lout of a fellow with a lowering countenance, ventured to expostulate. "Ye want to be careful of him. ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... Why talk rubbish, lout that you are—a real peasant!" came rebukes from all sides addressed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... came now to his resurrection. They had gotten the news of it in such strange, untraceable ways, that it seemed almost like mental telegraphy. The Greens of Westbrook were there—the three little girls in blue, now women grown. One of them came with her husband and baby; another with a blushing lout of a lad, to whom she was betrothed; and the third, with a meek blue eye, on the watch for a possible lover in the company. The Lawson sisters, from Granby, arrived early in the day, being conveyed thither by an obliging neighbor. Amelia Stokes rode to Upham on the butcher's ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman |
