"Crotchet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nor do I think that this group were meant for particular portraits, but a general representation of the violent distortions into which these crotchet-mongers draw their features on such ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... Villiers, leans over from the stalls and chats with Mr. Meredith Ball, or makes a mysterious statement to him that "the staccato should be a little more staccato." Presently, Professor Villiers remarks to the orchestra, "Instead of playing two short quavers, please play the crotchet in three time." The orchestra respond vigorously, but are stopped with a further request to "play the first chord in the second bar as a dotted minim instead of a quaver," and the Professor wanders about all over the house testing ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Cardwell would be. His two principal military subordinates, Vinoy and Ducrot, are excellent Generals of Division, but nothing more. As for his civilian colleagues, they are one and all hardly more practical than Professor Fawcett. Each has some crotchet of his own, each likes to dogmatize and to speechify, and each considers the others to be idiots, and has a small following of his own, which regards him as a species of divinity. They are philosophers, orators, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... inventors we 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, ...
— The Hall of Fantasy (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... des Femmes, "training for wives"), a comedy by Moli['e]re (1662). Arnolphe has a crotchet about the proper training of girls to make good wives, and tries his scheme upon Agnes, whom he adopts from a peasant's cottage, and designs in due time to make his wife. He sends her from early childhood to a convent, where difference of sex and the conventions of society are ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... quality of the port he had 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 books; ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... 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 ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... aggregate of rosy cheeks and sunny smiles represented, I was informed they were the sum total of a ladies' school at Williamsburg—and a very charming sum total they were. Having a day's holiday, they had come up by the early steamer to pic-nic on the banks, and were now returning to chronology and crotchet-work, or whatever else their studies might be. Landing at King's Mills, a "'bus" took us all up to Williamsburg, a distance of three or four miles, one half of which was over as dreary a road as need be, and the other ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... imagine I shall ever get a private Shilling by it: Therefore I hope you will recommend this Matter in one of your this Weeks Papers, and desire when my House opens you will accept the Liberty of it for the Trouble you have receiv'd from, SIR, Your Humble Servant, Ralph Crotchet. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... went again into the library, where Harry, as usual, was tapping her rings with the carved handle of the crotchet needle, that was as ornamental, and about as ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... easy Without admiring Pergolesi? Or through the earth with comfort go, That never heard of Doctor Blow? I hardly have; And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, Like other people, if you watch it, And know no more of stave or crotchet Than did the primitive Peruvians, Or those old ante queer diluvians, That lived in the unwash'd earth with Jubal, Before that dirty blacksmith, Tubal, By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, Found out, to his great surprise, ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... fish-women: a sure symptom that the spirit of selfishness was thoroughly awakened. From much experience, I hold this sign to be infallible, that the sentiment of aristocracy is active and vigilant. I never yet visited a country in which a minority got into its head the crotchet it was alone fit to dictate to the rest of its fellow-creatures, that it did not, without delay, set about proving its position, by reviling and calling names. In this particular "the few" are like women, who, conscious of their weakness, seldom fail to make up for the want of vigor in their ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Socialism, which proposes a universal re-distribution of property, with some unintelligible organisation of labour—all on an equality, no rich and no poor, no masters and no servants, everybody sharing his dinner with his neighbour—is a fancy as baseless as any crotchet which even the 'pattern nation' has ever concocted. Yet, it is not the less likely to be carried into execution, perhaps only the more likely from its practical absurdity. Of course, the more educated and wealthy portion ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... seen our son at Fortress Monroe. He said that his wound is improving, and that he himself was well and walking about on crutches. The exchange of prisoners that had been going on has, for some cause, been suspended, owing to some crotchet or other, but I hope will soon be resumed, and that we shall have him back soon. The armies are in such close proximity that frequent collisions are common along the outposts. Yesterday the enemy laid down two or three pontoon bridges across the Rappahannock and crossed his cavalry, ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... 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)
... is the execution of the testator's intentions. In the ancient law of Rome the subject of corresponding carefulness was the bestowal of the Universal Succession. One of these rules seems to our eyes a principle dictated by common sense, while the other looks very much like an idle crotchet. Yet that without the second of them the first would never have come into being is as certain as any proposition of ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... with you, and seem to be otherwise employed, and to your thinking very intent and busy, still that toy runs in their mind, that fear, that suspicion, that abuse, that jealousy, that agony, that vexation, that cross, that castle in the air, that crotchet, that whimsy, that fiction, that pleasant waking dream, whatsoever it is. Nec interrogant (saith [2523]Fracastorius) nec interrogatis recte respondent. They do not much heed what you say, their mind is on another matter; ask what you will, they do not attend, or much intend that business they ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... and freezing, and finally dying, to be forgotten as soon as dead by their fellow-men, and sent among the goats at the great assizes. A shiftless spendthrift must choose for a helpmeet (?) an equally slovenly, thriftless wife. A man with a crotchet should select a partner with the same morbid fancy. A man whose whole mental composition gravitates behind his ears, must find a mate with the same animal disposition. An individual whose mental organization is sadly unbalanced, is advised to seek for a wife ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... instinctive aversion, nature avenges herself by creating an unhealthy insane attraction. For this reason, the most earnest truth-seeking men fall into the worst delusions. They will not let their mind alone; they force it toward some ugly thing, which a crotchet of argument, a conceit of intellect recommends: and nature punishes their disregard of her warning by subjection to the ugly one, by belief in it. Just so, the most industrious critics get the most admiration. They think it unjust to rest in their instinctive natural horror; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... I accept any crotchet (pardon the word), however odd, rather than embrace at once the notion of ghosts and hobgoblins we imbibed in our nurseries. Still, to my unfortunate house, the evil is the same. What on earth can I ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... endow a hospital, or effect any other patriotic or merely fantastic purpose. He wished to heap up a pile of wealth (millions of acres) in the dim horizon of future years, that could be of no use to him or to those with whom he was connected by positive and personal ties, but as a crotchet of the brain, a gewgaw of the fancy.(2) Yet to enable himself to put this scheme in execution, he had perhaps toiled and watched all his life, denied himself rest, food, pleasure, liberty, society, and persevered with the patience and self-denial of a martyr. I have ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the grand spectacle of a convert to the good and true, and an apostle in the cause of both. Of him an honest thinker has said,—and there is much truth in the apparent paradox,—"No man who was not a fanatic, had ever more natural piety than he; and his supposed atheism is a mere metaphysical crotchet in which he was kept by the affected scorn ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... prescrib'd so kept we crotchet-time, And euerie stroake in ordre lyke a chyme, Whilst she, that had preseru'd me by hir pittie, Unto our musike fram'd ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... he was riding in front of our party, and there was something in the anxious writhing of his supple limbs that seemed to express a sense of his false position, and struck me as highly comic. I had no crotchet at that time against the punishment of death, but I was unused to blood, and the proposed victim looked so thoroughly capable of enjoying life (if he could only get to the other side of the river), that I thought ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... whose strenuous advocacy he had redeemed his wasted youth. Fiery as Burke's temper had often proved itself to be, fantastic and grotesque as his obstinacy had often showed itself in {228} clinging defiantly to some crotchet or whimsey, that seemed to the spectator unworthy the adhesion of his great intellect, his most eccentric action, his most erratic impulse, appeared sweetly reasonable and serenely lucid when contrasted with the conduct that ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... 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
... 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 use to quilt their knees when they tile houses, so these ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... said Lamb; "on the subject of characters in active life, plotters and disturbers of the world, I have a crotchet of my own, which I ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... of that year having been unusually mild, Mme. Favoral and her daughter had taken the habit of going daily to breathe the fresh air in the Place Royale. They took their work with them, crotchet or knitting; so that this salutary exercise did not in any way diminish the earnings of the week. It was during these walks that Mlle. Gilberte had at last noticed a young man, unknown to her, whom she met every day ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... slave of many, manufacturing Double Basses and other instruments from the material selected and purchased by his temporary employer, ofttimes compelled to carry out some crotchet of the patron much against his own wishes. The wood thus forced upon him was often of the worst description; and, in addition, he was frequently obliged to complete his work within a given time. Instruments manufactured under such conditions can scarcely, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... kind of lace is made, and is really the only real lace that Ireland can claim. This is the Irish crotchet, which in its finer varieties is a close imitation of Venetian Point, but made with fine thread and with a crotchet needle. Some of the best is really worth purchasing, but it is costly, realising as much as five guineas per yard. A very delicate "Tatting" also comes from the Emerald Isle, ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... what pleasure is there in this world like that of watching for a beloved one! At the opposite end of the apartment were her ladies, engaged upon some fancy work, in those times violently in vogue, like that eternal knitting or crotchet-work is in ours. "Come hither, Lucrezia," said the lady, at length. "Discern you yon trees—groups of them scattered about, and through which an occasional glimpse of the highway may be distinguished? Nay, not there; far, far away in the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... replied Newman. 'I have a crotchet in my head that it must be so. I have found out a man, who plainly knows more than he cares to tell at once. And he has already dropped such hints to me as puzzle me—I say, as puzzle me,' said Newman, scratching ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... enough to madden the eight healthy girls who lived at The Dales. Aunt Sophia was, in their opinion, all crotchets, all nervousness, all fads. She had no tact whatsoever; at least, such was their first opinion of her. She put her foot down on this little crotchet, and pressed this passing desire out of sight. She brought new rules of life into their everyday existence, and, what is more, she insisted on being obeyed. With all their cleverness they were not half so clever as Aunt Sophia; they were no match for this good lady, who was still ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... erroneously suggests that both the hooks and the curves are usual and appropriate signs of "the parenthesis." In Garner's quarto Dictionary, the French word Crochet, as used by printers, is translated, "A brace, a crotchet, a parenthesis;" and the English word Crotchet is defined, "The mark of a parenthesis, in printing, thus [ ]." But Webster defines Crotchet, "In printing, a hook including words, a sentence or a passage distinguished from the rest, thus []." ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... scruple to say in a stage-coach that Mr. Wood is no scholar; on which the said Wood calls him in return 'slanderous Slaney;' or the elderly Mr. Barge, late Senior Fellow of St. Michael's, thinks that his pretty bride has not been received with due honours; or Dr. Crotchet is for years kept out of his destined bishopric by a sinister influence; or Mr. Professor Carraway has been infamously shown up, in the Edinburgh, by an idle fellow whom he plucked in the schools; ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... my life has put a crotchet in my head of sketching it in some future epistle to you. My compliments to Charles and Mr. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... united to the protracted absence of Mark, made Bridget and Anne extremely unhappy. To increase this unhappiness, Doctor Yardley took it into his head to dispute the legality of a marriage that had been solemnized on board a ship. This was an entirely new legal crotchet, but the federal government was then young, and jurisdictions had not been determined as clearly as has since been the case. Had it been the fortune of Doctor Yardley to live in these later times, he would not have given himself ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper |
