"Strum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for music, and to such lengths did she go in her madness that she even invited as her guests celebrated composers and singers. The duke was old-fashioned and hated those crazy people who lived only to hum and strum. He would have none of them, and quarrels with his duchess were of daily occurrence. Indeed, sirs, so bad did it become that he swore that he would leave the house if Messire Gluck, or Messire Piccini, or any of the other strolling ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... clatter of crockery, his supper lasted long. Liza fancied she could smell chicken soup and roast duck. After supper discordant sounds of the piano floated across from the villa. In all probability the gentleman in the top hat was trying to amuse the child in some way, and allowing it to strum on it. ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... love, as I never can refuse anything to a woman who smells of fresh scent, and who has a large store of promises in her looks, and who puts out her red, smiling lips immediately, as if she were going to offer you handsel money, I bought a piano, so that she might strum upon it to her heart's content. I got it, however, on the hire-purchase system, and paid so much a month, like grisettes[9] ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... intellectual pursuits, at least in the present day. The person in most esteem among them is invariably the greatest MAJO, and to acquire that character it is necessary to appear in the dress of a Merry Andrew, to bully, swagger, and smoke continually, to dance passably, and to strum the guitar. They are fond of obscenity and what they term PICARDIAS. Amongst them learning is at a terrible discount, Greek, Latin, or any of the languages generally termed learned, being considered in any light but accomplishments, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... strike up, sweep the chords, tweedle, fiddle; strike the lyre, beat the drum; blow the horn, sound the horn, wind the horn; doodle; grind the organ; touch the guitar &c. (instruments) 417; thrum, strum, beat time. execute, perform; accompany; sing a second, play a second; compose, set to music, arrange. sing, chaunt, chant, hum, warble, carol, chirp, chirrup, lilt, purl, quaver, trill, shake, twitter, whistle; sol-fa[obs3]; intone. have an ear for ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... you know my evening amusements! To draw patterns for ruffles, which I had not materials to make up; to play Pope Joan with the curate; to read a sermon to my aunt; or to be stuck down to an old spinet to strum my father ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... this—for we ourselves have been known to take fancies to songs of so high a standard as Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, The Honeysuckle and the Bee, &c., and we hum them while soaking in our morning tub, we whistle them as we go down to breakfast, we strum them on the piano after breakfast, we hear them rattled outside by a barrel organ, as many times as there are forthcoming pennies from windows, while we are having lunch, we hear them pathetically sung at afternoon parties by hired entertainers, bands play them in the restaurants during dinner, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... he began to strum the symphony. The first chords awoke a young man who was lying ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson |
