"Crotchety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he murmured to himself. "I am catching some part of these people's folly. Mr. Fentolin is only an ordinary, crotchety invalid with queer tastes. On the big things he is probably like other men. I shall go ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mere peace or war a commotion to make, When the Party's existence was plainly at stake! When office was offer'd, to cast it behind, And to talk of such trash as the good of mankind! It is clear, my good friend, such a crotchety prig Has but little pretence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... A crotchety person, according to this same Noah Webster, whom I have quoted before, is one who has whims or crotchets in the brain. Now a word ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... a week since you were here. Your mother's well I hope (sit down there now and rest yourself). Some people are always well, but I'm not—it's (sit there beside the window, like a good boy) it's hard to have poor health and a crotchety husband, but we all have our trials. Is your father well too? but what's the use of asking, every one's well but me. Did your aunt get the pot of jam I sent her last Tuesday? Raspberry is supposed to be good for the throat, but her throat's all right. ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... of it that I have promptly made up my mind to speak to you.' 'You must guide him, you know; you must steer him; you must direct him; he is one of a crotchety sort,' said Mr Meagles, evidently meaning nothing more than that he did new things and went new ways; 'but he is as honest as the sun, and so good night!' Clennam went back to his room, sat down again before his fire, and made up his mind that he was glad he had resolved not to fall ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... share her husband's architectural enthusiasm, she had too rigorous a view of a wife's duties, and too profound a deference for Sir Christopher, to regard submission as a grievance. As for Sir Christopher, he was perfectly indifferent to criticism. 'An obstinate, crotchety man,' said his neighbours. But I, who have seen Cheverel Manor, as he bequeathed it to his heirs, rather attribute that unswerving architectural purpose of his, conceived and carried out through long years of systematic personal ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... of the Palladian style towards a restoration of the Gothic, which marked the close of the eighteenth century. This was the object he had set his heart on, with a singleness of determination which was regarded with not a little contempt by his fox-hunting neighbors.... "An obstinate, crotchety man," said his neighbors. But I, who have seen Cheverel Manor as he bequeathed it to his heirs, rather attribute that unswerving architectural purpose of his, conceived and carried out through long years of systematic personal exertion, to something ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... and amusing play of contemporary American life enlivened with up-to-the-minute allusions. "She's got a good mind," is said of one character, "she's read 'Anthony Adverse.'" The play gives a brief glimpse of everyday life in the Hunter family, with Mr. Hunter grown crotchety and weary with business cares, making life miserable instead of pleasant for the family he has toiled for. His wife meekly accepts his grumblings and his tyranny. His children frequently threaten rebellion, but ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... doubt he's in verra great pain; but ye see, my dear, I'm auld and crotchety, and the creature's verra annoying wi' his whining and moaning ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... reappears on the scene, it will be positive that you have secured the present at the cost of the future. If he is not dead, he will die. Stumble, and you fall! Invent anything of any kind and claim your rights, you will be crotchety, cunning, ill-disposed to ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac
... crotchety old colored man began to hop around in lively fashion with hot water, and later with coffee and other stimulants; and he nursed Koku all day as though he were a ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... sojourn at the Training School, some important changes had occurred in Roger's circumstances. He had, more than a year before, graduated second in his class at college, and had given the impression that he would have been first had he taken the full four years' course. His crotchety uncle, with whom since the reconciliation he had resided, had died, and after a few months his wife followed him, and Roger found himself a wealthy man, but not a happy one. Beyond giving his parents every comfort which they craved, and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... She mustn't give it up. With her help—and you know in the management she's simply wonderful—with her help, I think I shall be able to bring something about that'll startle folks. Only, she mustn't throw me over. And she mustn't get too crotchety with the boarders. I've had some difficulty in that line, as it is. In fact, I've had to be rather cross. You know about the Boutwoods, for instance! Well, I've smoothed that over.... It's nothing, nothing—if she'll ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... fine fellow! I am glad for your sake and I've known him since he was so high." She held her hand a couple of feet from the ground. Natasha blushed happily. "I like him and all his family. Now listen! You know that old Prince Nicholas much dislikes his son's marrying. The old fellow's crotchety! Of course Prince Andrew is not a child and can shift without him, but it's not nice to enter a family against a father's will. One wants to do it peacefully and lovingly. You're a clever girl and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... I should like this little escapade of yours and mine to be known. You must take care. Why, you know, there's father. He's very crotchety over some things. He likes all of you, but over and ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... is, in the community that has begun to stamp Sixth City on its shirts and its shoe tabs, a bank president who—to put the matter lightly—is a particular traveler. More than one black man, rising high in porter service, has had his vanity come to grief when this crotchety personage ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... only relative surviving," she resumed, "being brother George, as is eighty-two, and crotchety at that, lives out 'Oxton way, so I wrote to him about the funeral for a Monday, and when the undertaker puts it forward to the Saturday I didn't have no one to send all that way, so brother George—'e's eighty-two, and crotchety at that—'e didn't get ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... various reasons, the old men drifted from a position of respect to one of ridicule. Undoubtedly they lend themselves to this; they are obstinate, foolish, prosy, boring, crotchety and unpleasant to look upon. Comic writers poked fun at these failings which are only too self-evident and showered ridicule upon them. Then as the majority of audiences is composed of young men, first of all because there are more young men than old, and secondly because ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... with tearful warnings that Terry's unwillingness to refuse credit to any one who came in with a tale of hard-luck was ruining the business: and Terry had lost the custom of several good families by declining to humor their crotchety unreasonableness. ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... appointment to the government of a colony as distracted as it was important, did not arise from the noble lord's fitness, but from his political interest; and that Earl Grey, the whig colonial minister, had performed his official duties in a way crotchety, self-sufficient, and arrogant—in the spirit of the partizan rather than ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... eccentricities, absurdities, ingenuities,—mental freaks of all sorts. But I think he would have now and then recognized a sound idea, a just comparison, a suggestive hint, a practical notion, which redeemed a page of extravagances and crotchety whims. I confess that I am often pleased with fancies of his, and should be willing to adopt them as my own. I think he has, in the midst of his erratic and tangled conceptions, some perfectly clear and consistent ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... articles well apart. I may seem likely to have some difficulty in admitting the claim of Cobbett after disallowing that of Junius under the definition just given, but I have no very great fear of being unable to making it good. Much as Cobbett disliked persons, and crotchety as he was in his dislikes, they were always dislikes of principle in the bottom. The singular Tory-Radicalism which Cobbett exhibited, and which has made some rank him unduly low, was no doubt partly due to accidents of birth and education, and to narrowness ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... exceedingly,—beyond all other hoofed animals. Each one has its own headful of notions, and rarely will two be found quite alike in temperament and views of life. Some are sanguine and sensible, others are nervous, crotchety, and full of senseless fears. Those who are responsible for them in captivity are constantly harassed by fears that they will stampede in their stalls or yards, and break their own necks and legs in most unexpected ways. They require greater ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... human life and human character, but are pure fantasy pieces, in which the personages are a heterogeneous medley of Grecian gods and goddesses, and impassible, colorless creatures, with sublunary names, all thinking with one brain, and speaking with one tongue,—the conceitful, crotchety brain, and the dainty, well-trained tongue of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... "Why the devil do you borrow books of Flamel? I can buy you all you want—" but he felt himself irresistibly forced into an attitude of smiling compliance. "Flamel always has the newest books going, hasn't he? You must be careful, by the way, about returning what he lends you. He's rather crotchety about his library." ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... do with a parson,' is the dictum of the villagers when they see her go by with me. Snap is very faithful, very crotchety, distrusting nearly everybody, greeting every fresh acquaintance with marked suspicion, and going through life with a most exalted and ridiculous notion of her own importance, and also of that ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... crotchety" Archbishop of Dublin was looked at askance by the extreme Evangelicals of his day (though Thomas Arnold has eulogised his holiness), and there is no doubt that his theology, however able and sincere, was mainly inspired by the "daylight of ordinary reason and of historical ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... as that story about the old gentleman. It is almost too good to be true, but you are not in the habit of quizzing. The trait is so naturelike and Dickens-like, no American—no living soul but a peppery, crotchety, good-hearted, mellow old John Bull—could have done such a thing. God bless him! Perhaps the verses are not much, and perhaps he is no great judge whether they are or not: but what a pleasant thing it is to win the hearty liking of any honest creature who is neither ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... of our liberty of the press; Bishop Butler, whose "Analogy" showed how logic and philosophy could be applied to support the cause of Christian truth; Dr. Arnold, the reformer of our modern school system, whom Oxford persecuted during life and honoured in death; and lastly, the clever crotchety Archbishop Whateley, who has not only proved that Napoleon Bonaparte never existed, but that Mr. Gibbon Wakefield's bankrupt schemes of colonization were triumphant successes. Next we come to Merton, the most ancient of all the ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... the church. Masons were scarce in England at that time, and most of those who had skill were at work on half-built cathedrals. David was a wise and thorough builder, but he had the reputation of being rather crotchety. Sir Walter Giffard suspected that this was due to his absolute honesty. He would rather pick up a job here and there which he could do as it should be done, than to have steady employment where scamped building was winked at. This suited the knight very well. He wanted ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... to understand himself, and could not. For Elsa and Margot and Hedwig were not the only ones by a long way. What girl in the village did he not love, if it came to that: Liesel, who worked so hard and lived so poorly, bullied by her cross-grained granddam. Susanna, plain and a little crotchety, who had never had a sweetheart to coax the thin lips into smiles. The little ones—for so they seemed to long, lanky Ulrich, with their pleasant ways—Ulrich smiled as he thought of them—how should a man love one ...
— The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl • Jerome K. Jerome |
