"Crotchet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the tone of this note which gave me great uneasiness. Its whole style differed materially from that of Legrand. What could he be dreaming of? What new crotchet possessed his excitable brain? What "business of the highest importance" could he possibly have to transact? Jupiter's account of him boded no good. I dreaded lest the continued pressure of misfortune ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... of. It's some crotchet of Sairey, now she's begun studyin' the woman's question, as she calls it, an' thinks 'e ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... of the 27th regiment, under the command of their colonel (Paul), occupied, in column of sections of four, the small space between the road and the river, for the purpose of seizing the enemy's artillery, and some ten or twelve friendly Indians were directed to move under the bank. The crotchet, formed by the front line and General Desha's division was an important point. At that place the venerable governor of Kentucky was posted, who, at the age of sixty-six, preserves all the vigour of youth, the ardent zeal which distinguished him in the Revolutionary war, and the undaunted ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... so he called the religious men whom he had there. For he said that on t'other side the water lived friars who styled themselves her sweet ladyship's most humble servants. Item, the goodly Friar-minors, who are semibreves of bulls; the smoked-herring tribe of Minim Friars; then the Crotchet Friars. So that these diminutives could be no more than Semiquavers. By the statutes, bulls, and patents of Queen Whims, they were all dressed like so many house-burners, except that, as in Anjou your bricklayers ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... to his crotchet, that's my maxim," submitted Bowers as they threshed the matter out in ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... it still further as the pace increases. The pupil must abandon all thought of making the bow jump, also he must avoid pressing it on the string. The whole action must be free and bold and the tempo for this exercise should be not slower than M.M. crotchet 100. At first it will be found impossible to get as far as the semiquavers without some confusion. At the first sign of irregularity the pupil should stop, pause a moment, and then recommence with the semibreves. It should be seen that the bow is not gripped too tightly through over-anxiety ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... is too strong for him; regardless of curb and bridle in this instance. Let us pity a man of genius, mounted on so ungovernable a Hobby; leaping the barriers, in spite of his best resolutions. Perhaps the poetic temperament is more liable to such morbid biases, influxes of imaginative crotchet, and mere folly that cannot be cured? Friedrich Wilhelm never would or could dismount from his Hobby: but he rode him under much sorrow henceforth; under showers of anger and ridicule;—contumelious ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... took a more general survey of the inmates of the hall. Many persons were present whose right of entrance appeared to consist in some crotchet of the brain, which, so long as it might operate, produced a change in their relation to the actual world. It is singular how very few there are who do not occasionally gain admittance on such a score, either in abstracted musings, or momentary thoughts, or bright anticipations, or vivid remembrances; ...
— The Hall of Fantasy (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... A crotchet comes into my mind Concerning a proverb of old, Plain dealing's a jewel most rare, And more precious than silver or gold: And therefore with patience give ear, And listen to what here is penned, These verses were written on purpose The honest ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... them are remarkably good of their kind, few of them can be called positively bad in it. And yet again, if he has been fortunately gifted by nature with that appreciation of form which saves the critic from mere prejudice and crotchet, from mere partiality, he will, I believe, go further still, and say that while owing something to spirit, they owe most to form itself, to the form of the single-assonanced or mono-rhymed tirade, assisted ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... syl.), a man of wealth, who has a crotchet about the proper training of girls to make good wives, and tries his scheme on Agnes, whom he adopts from a peasant's hut, and intends in time to make his wife. She is brought up, from the age of four years, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... legislature) I insisted—but vainly insisted—that these and similar honoraria ought to be accepted, because else you were lowering the prescriptive rights and value of the office, which you—a mere locum tenens for some coming successor—had no right to do upon a solitary scruple or crotchet, arising probably from dyspepsia. Better men, no doubt, than ever stood in your stockings, had pocketed thankfully the gifts of ancient, time-honored custom. My uncle, however, though not with the carnal recusancy which besieged the spiritual efforts of poor Cuthbert Headrigg, that incorrigible ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... affectionate voice, as she drew upon the bridle. The pony turned toward her, and rubbed his head against her arm for an instant or two; then, pricking up his ears, he started off at a light, cheerful trot, and went on his way as freely as if no silly crotchet had ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... vain dreaming, as "a fanciful private speculation which is now making its way in several departments of natural science." In truth, Virchow does me greatly too much honour when he designates as my "personal crotchet" an idea which for the last ten years has been the most precious common possession of all morphological science. If Virchow were not so unfamiliar with the literature of morphology, he must have known that it is penetrated throughout by this principle ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... the first of Edison's masters, and perhaps his fellows, who appreciated him. Mediocrity had only seen the gawky stripling, with his moonstruck air, and pestilent habit of trying some new crotchet. Himself an inventor, Milliken recognised in his deep-set eye and musing brow the fire of a suppressed genius. He was then just twenty-one. The friendship of Mr. Milliken, and the opportunity for experiment, rendered the Boston office a ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Magus, strange beings with a strange religion in their heart of hearts. The London "eccentric" always finds that worship, like life, brings weariness and satiety in the end; the Parisian monomaniac lives cheerfully in concubinage with his crotchet to the last. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... confusion of distinct ideas. An example of this is the recent use of the adverbial phrases in respect of, in regard of, for in or with respect to, or regard to. This innovation is without any syntactical ground, and ought to be condemned and avoided as a mere grammatical crotchet."—George P. Marsh, "Lectures on the English Language," ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... all relations and intercourse, and tenderness to all created things which the good of the community does not require them to destroy. And though their notion of compensation to a tortured insect or a cankered flower may seem to some of us a very wild crotchet, yet, at least, is not a mischievous one; and it may furnish matter for no unpleasing reflection to think that within the abysses of earth, never lit by a ray from the material heavens, there should have ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the "British" division, and the sum total of the "local" and "British" might be placed correctly with all the rest in the "foreign." Why, then, should valuable space be wasted for three birds, simply to perpetuate an error in working out a crotchet? ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... lapse into alliteration! [Finding his fun in bewildering them with cackling guttural volubility.] Yes, Cockerels cockaded with cockles, Cockatrice-headed Cockasters, cock-eyed Cockatoos! Not content to be common Cocks, your crotchet it was to be what but crack Cocks? Yes, Fashion, to be accounted of thy flock, these chuckle-headed Cocks craved to be Super-cocks. But know ye not, ye crazy Cocks, one cannot be so queer a Cock, but there may ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... "whip-poor-will" what the Brazilians call "Joao-corta-pao." The Guinea fowl may have been the "Afraa avis;"but that was a dear luxury amongst the Romans, though the Greek meleagris was cheap. The last crotchet about it is that of an African traveller, who holds it to be the peacock of Solomon's navies, completely ignoring the absolute certainty which the South-Indian word ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... crusade against the "amour-propre" of every human being but himself, was the crotchet of this able, but fiery and grasping little man. He had a strong relish for public representation in his own person, but an extreme abhorrence of the like display in any other. He quelled, he kept down when he could; and when he could not, he ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... lack of proportion which is to be found in an English middle-class lodging-house. Harmonium and piano in opposite corners,—crude chromos and distorted prints upon the walls; artificial flowers, anaemic in colouring and glass-protected, on the shelves; unwieldy albums on the table; coarse crotchet drapings on the chairs; the Royal Family in startling pigments as an over-mantel. For the moment one might have fancied that it was Mrs Scroggins's ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... really delight us, If you'll do your endeavor to bring From the Club a young person to write us Our prologue, and that sort of thing; Poor Crotchet, who did them supremely, Is gone, for a Judge, to Bengal; I fear we shall miss him extremely, This ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... had another reason for withholding his sanction from the iron bridge; and as that reason shows how some wretched crotchet, springing from their miserable system, is sure to start up on all occasions, and defeat the most needed improvement, I shall here state what it was. At the point where it was wished to have the bridge erected, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... impossibility to a Brown to leave the most disreputable lame dog on the other side of a stile. Most other folk get tired of such work. The old Browns, with red faces, white whiskers, and bald heads, go on believing and fighting to a green old age. They have always a crotchet going, till the old man with the scythe reaps and garners them away for troublesome old boys ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... sides together, and under every space, and under the chain stitches which form the slope, all round and where the crown is to be sewed in, work 2 d.c. stitches; and round the front and back, where the border will be worked, crotchet 3 d.c. stitches into every space, making 7 ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... been drinking, (the first of the bin which he had tasted,) and upon the decision which the Chancellor might come to on a case brought into court on his advice, and which had been argued that afternoon. At last Frankpledge unwittingly fell foul of a favorite crotchet of Mortmain's—and at it they went, hammer and tongs, for nearly twenty minutes, (it had nothing whatever to do with the case they were consulting upon.) In the end, Mortmain of course adhered to his points, and Frankpledge intrenched himself in his ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... you drivin' at?" said Mr. Slick. "I never seed you so much out in your latitude afore, marm, I vow. We were talkin' of reparin' a vessel, not strippin' a woman; what under the sun could have put that 'ere crotchet ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... that the pleasure of cursing the House of Hanover and drinking King James's health, all amply overbalanced by three hundred pounds a year." In truth, his Jacobitism was by this time, whatever it had once been, nothing more than a humorous crotchet, giving opportunity for the expression ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... prepare here? Sure there's no meat i'th' house, at least not drest, Do's he mean to mock 'em? or some new bred crotchet Come o're his brains; I do not like his kindness: But silence best becomes me: if he mean foul play, Sure they are enough to right themselves, and let 'em, I'le sit by, so they ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher |
