"By hook or by crook" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me. I follow the dictates of my heart in all things, and I am master of my own destiny. Shall I tell your Mr. Standish that I fell in love with you the first moment I saw you, and that I mean to take you from him by hook or by crook?" ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... indicated that he knew a great deal. But not by promise of security and reward could the valet be induced to return to France. "I might ask the King to give up Martin, the valet of Marsilly, to me," Colbert concludes, and, by hook or by crook, he secured the person of the wretched man, as we have seen. In a postcript, Colbert says that he has heard ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... the entrance on the following day, for now Pere Antoine might return at any time, and I knew that he would prove far less tractable here in his own bailiwick than he had been when I defied him at the Frontenac. By hook or by crook I must ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... like that, she gave me to understand, I must by hook or by crook obtain. She had not a second. None of her people in the camp over there possessed one. I am ashamed to confess that I actually paid her a pound for this brass pin! The purchase was partly an indication of my temperament, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... same kind: to be, that is, a reflection of the events and interests and popular excitements of the day. But the wide gulf between the music-hall Revue and the old Cabaret performance is that art and literature could not, by hook or by crook, be dragged into the average Englishman's scheme ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... well in health, but childishly annoyed that my play was going to be produced and resolved to get all the money he could from me by hook or by crook. I never met such persistence in demands. I could only settle with him decently by paying him a further ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... of one thing," he said excitedly, as he walked between us, and answered the General's question. "We have got to solve the mystery, and she will see again. This is something new, but it has a very simple solution, which we must find out by hook or by crook. When I know how Miss McLeod lost her sight I shall very likely be able to find out how to restore it, and I shall also know something that perhaps no other oculist has ever dreamed of. There isn't the slightest sign of any organic disease, which probably means that Nature ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... direction, a very singular state of mind. A warm devotion to l'elocution francaise is easy enough to understand; but Frederick's devotion was much more than warm; it was so absorbing and so intense that it left him no rest until, by hook or by crook, by supplication, or by trickery, or by paying down hard cash, he had obtained the close and constant proximity of—what?—of a man whom he himself described as a 'singe' and a 'scelerat,' a man of base soul ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... really serious sortie will be made, but that after two or three days of the sham fights, such as took place to-day, the troops will quietly return into Paris. The object of General Trochu is, they say, to amuse the Parisians, and if he can by hook or by crook get the National Guard under the mildest of fires, to celebrate their heroism, in order that they may return the compliment. I cannot, however, believe that no attempt will be made to fight a battle; the troops are now massed from St. Denis ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... and told me that the seats on the mail-carts had to be engaged several days in advance, and that I might make up my mind to stay where I was for some time to come. I was not at all prepared for this, and I determined to get on by hook or by crook; as a preliminary measure, I made friends with the postmaster, from whose office the mail-carts started. From him I learnt that my only chance was to call upon the Deputy-Commissioner, by whose orders the seats were distributed. I took ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... leather, life, or at least some hair, and you will have done more than ever was done yet. For why, this would bring the wisdom of the court into question, as if we had took you up for nothing, and dealt wrongfully by you. Well, by hook or by crook, we must have something out of you. Look ye, it is a folly to make a rout for a fart and ado; one word is as good as twenty. I have no more to say to thee, but that, as thou likest thy former entertainment, thou wilt tell me more of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Tommy was once more confronting bare wooden panels, and the voices within had sunk once more to a mere undistinguishable murmur. Tommy became restive. The conversation he had overheard had stimulated his curiosity. He felt that, by hook or by crook, ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... asked Butler, grimly determined by hook or by crook, to bring this girl to her senses. "Ye'll be takin' no thought of his wife and children then? The fact that he's goin' to jail, besides, is nawthin' to ye, I suppose. Ye'd love him just as much in convict stripes, I suppose—more, maybe." ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... managed with great discreetness and delicacy, and accomplished by hook or by crook, if the means could be found. "You need not be scrupulous as to the form or law of protection, provided the name of protector can ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Leaf, in an uncertain voice, "there was a man who lived in a house! Well, this man went thinking and thinking night and day. At last, he said to himself, as I might, 'If I had only ten pound, I'd make a fortune.' At last by hook or by crook, behold he got ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... succeeded by hook or by crook in guiding the pet lambs, Evadne included, in the way they should go. I reported progress to ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... poured out a great glass of wine and drank it off at a draught, trembling with joy at the idea of being, by hook or by crook, in the secret of some high archiepiscopal misdemeanor. While he was drinking he did not see with what attention Aramis was noting the sounds in the great court. A courier came in about eight o'clock as Francois brought in the fifth bottle, and, although the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... to itself—do I love my mother? We have lost this instinctive sense; we have set one portion of ourselves aside to watch the rest; we must keep up appearances and our consistency; we must respect—that is, look back upon—ourselves, and be respected, if possible; we must, by hook or by crook, be respectable. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... determined not to assist him. Indeed, I mischievously pretended to turn the conversation, and talked of his usual topics, dogs, horses, and hunting; but he was very brief in his replies, and invariably got back, by hook or by crook, into the ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... could raise, "by hook or by crook," fifty or one hundred dollars to pay for a passage, providing they could find one who was willing to risk aiding them. Thus, while the Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia especially neither charged nor accepted anything for ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... not reasonably expect to be peculiarly cherished and comforted by our royal family. Now Jeanne's claims were no better, and no nearer, in 1781, than those of our supposed Stewart adventuress in 1904. But Jeanne was sanguine. Something must be done, by hook or by crook, for the blood of the Valois. She must fasten on her great relations, the royal family. By 1783 Jeanne was pawning her furniture and dining at the expense of her young admirers, or of her servants, for, somehow, they were attached to a mistress who did not pay their ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... a brave soldier, although the flavor of bushwhacking clung to his war record; he was a fast friend and a generous foe; what one hand got by hook or by crook—chiefly, it is to be feared, by crook—the other made haste ...
— 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.
... was more or less adamant. By hook or by crook, by special arrangements with friends or agents in nearby towns and the principal showy resorts of New York, he managed to know, providing they did leave the grounds, either with or without his consent, about where they were and what they had ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... say this) week that you like I can see Colonel Turner. If you and Evans can arrange a day I don't think we need mind the rest of the Committee. We must get at least two other borings ten or fifteen miles off, if possible on the same parallel, by hook or by crook. It will tell us more about the Nile valley than has ever been known. That Italian fellow who published sections must ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... this point we plainly discern the task assigned to modern art—that of stupefying or intoxicating, of lulling to sleep or bewildering. By hook or by crook to make conscience unconscious! To assist the modern soul over the sensation of guilt, not to lead it back to innocence! And this for the space of moments only! To defend men against themselves, that their inmost heart may be silenced, that they may ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Englishman, Captain William Parker, who had resided in the islands for many years, and was thoroughly acquainted with the trade in that part of the globe. He was then making preparations to engage in a sort of wholesale smuggling business, and had obtained possession, by hook or by crook, of two registers of American vessels. One was a BONA FIDE register of a privateer which had been captured during the war, and the other a forgery neatly executed by an artist in Martinico, having the signatures and seals duly arranged and perfected, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... head till his neck was stretched to its full length. "Checkynshaw may be an honest man, as things go; but you can't make me believe he would give up that block of stores while he could hold on to it by hook or by crook. He wants me under his thumb, where he can know what I'm about. He has lost his papers, and he feels nervous about them. In my opinion, there's something or other among those documents which would let the light in upon that block of stores. That's why he ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... occupied in building little towers of sugar upon the edge of the tea tray. After a time, so far as I can remember, we drew round the fire and began as usual to praise men—how strong, how noble, how brilliant, how courageous, how beautiful they were—how we envied those who by hook or by crook managed to get attached to one for life—when Poll, who had said nothing, burst into tears. Poll, I must tell you, has always been queer. For one thing her father was a strange man. He left her a fortune in his will, but on condition that she read all the books in the London Library. ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... unknown to most of the juvenile actors. The symbol lives on from generation to generation after the significance is lost; and we have seen the children of our Catholic neighbors as busy as their Protestant playmates in collecting, "by hook or by crook," the materials for Pope- Night bonfires. We remember, on one occasion, walking out with a gifted and learned Catholic friend to witness the fine effect of the illumination on the hills, and his hearty appreciation of its picturesque and wild beauty,—the busy groups in ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... clerk to Eldrick & Pascoe, solicitors, of Barford, a young man who earnestly desired to get on in life, by hook or by crook, with no objection whatever to crookedness, so long as it could be performed in safety and secrecy, had once during one of his periodical visits to the town Reference Library, lighted on a maxim of that other ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... tore open his telegram, Fandor lit a cigarette.... By hook or by crook, he must see the contents of this telegram which his travelling companion was reading with frowning brows. But Fandor might squint in the glass for the reflection of the message, pass behind the abbe to peep over his shoulder while pretending to examine the posters decorating ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... means!" exclaimed the angry woman, losing all command over her tongue. "It means, in plain English, just this—'I'm going to try, by hook or by crook, to get Iver for myself.' That's what you're driving at, hussy! But I'll put you by the shoulders out of the door, or ever Iver comes, that you may be at none of them tricks. Do you think that because he baptized you, that ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... will say only this, that having painted in fresco at Calcinaia a Madonna with the Child in her arms, he who had charged him to do it, in place of paying him, gave him words; whence Buonamico, who was not used to being trifled with or being fooled, determined to get his due by hook or by crook. And so, having gone one morning to Calcinaia, he transformed the child that he had painted in the arms of the Virgin into a little bear, but in colours made only with water, without size or distemper. This change being ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... ... Were these the pangs of unrequited love that tore her breast? In her desire to land the great catch, by hook or by crook, when had she paused to consult her heart about the glittering prospect? What else did it all mean but that she, calculating, had offered herself to him at the price of his hand, name, and enduring complement of happiness, and he, lightly responding, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... voice which had numbered sovereigns among its respectful listeners, might be a heart that would go inside a nut-shell; that beneath this or that white rope of pearl and pink bosom, might lie the half-lung which had, by hook or by crook, to sustain its possessor above-ground till ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... without its Liszt-pupil, and in Leipzig several were settled, none of whom had ever heard of Martin Schrievers. They refused to admit him to their jealous clique. In their opinion, he belonged to that goodly class of persons, who, having by hook or by crook, contrived to spend an hour in the Abbe of Weimar's presence, afterwards abused the sacred narre of pupil. He was hated by these chosen few with more vigour than by the conservative pedagogues, who, naturally enough, saw the ruin of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson |
