"Crotchet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... equally as well if placed in 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
... healthy 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... calls these regular little curves "hooks," or 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 []." This again ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... theory of descent as dilettanteism and 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
... for such a house. Here our young democrat kept half-a-dozen horses, all of them—as men around were used to declare—fit to go, although they were said to have been bought at not more than L100 each. It was supposed to be a crotchet on the part of Lord Hampstead to assert that cheap things were as good as dear, and there were some who believed that he did in truth care as much for his horses as other people. It was certainly a fact ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... coiffures—Hear me talk like the Peacock! I 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 occur a queerer Cock? Let some Cock come whose coccyx ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... favor of paper money. The farmers from the inland towns were unanimous in supporting the measure. They could not see the difference between the state making a dollar out of paper and a dollar out of silver. The idea that the value did not lie in the government stamp they dismissed as an idle crotchet, a wire-drawn theory, worthy only of "literary fellows." What they could see was the glaring fact that they had no money, hard or soft; and they wanted something that would satisfy their creditors and buy new gowns for their wives, whose raiment ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... imagine more than one cavil being made against this by the most carping of critics and the most wedded to the crotchet of "kinds"—that it is too dramatic for a story, and that we ought to have had it as a drama. If this were further twisted into an accusation of plagiarism from the actual theatre, I think it could be rebutted at once. The situations separately might be found ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... tongue then speaketh more smoothly, and the ear listeneth more benignantly; but why do I attempt to reason with you? do I not know you for conceited creatures, with one idea—and that a foolish one—a crotchet, for the sake of which ye would sacrifice anything, religion if required—country? There, fling down my book, I do not wish ye to walk any farther in my company, unless you cast your nonsense away, which ye will never ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... cannot be reproduced. It is F dotted crotchet, F quaver, F quaver, F dotted crotchet, D crotchet, E crotchet. This bar is then repeated ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... mind.' And I to him: 'Pooh! Isn't it enough that she's got to put up with the cranks and crotchets of one o' YOUR sect?'—Oh Mary, my dear, there's many a true word said in jest. Though little did I think what the crotchet would be." And slowly the rims of Tilly's eyes and the tip of her ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... with. Every page, nay, every line is a satire upon the extravagance and precocity of what Vivian Grey calls our "artificial state;" and all the weak sides of our age are mercilessly dealt with by the coterie at Crotchet Castle. The book is altogether Shandean, and the satire shandied to and fro with great vivacity. We need not tell the reader what period or event of the last seven years is pointed to in the following extract. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... 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 a groaning ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... that country was England, in the 16th and 17th centuries. King and courtier, peasant and ploughman, each could 'take his part,' with each music was a part of his daily life; while so far from being above knowing the difference between a minim and a crotchet, a gentleman would have been ashamed ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... 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 of the nation view the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... Wives (L'['e]cole 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 ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... 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" ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... principles by 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 ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... are,' 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 his red nose into a state of violent inflammation, and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... men as 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. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Exquisitely developed in body, must not her mind have grown rank with weeds,—beautiful perhaps, but poisonous? Herein Balder fancied he could trace the one-sided influence of his crack-brained uncle.—Whether his daughter or not, Gnulemah was evidently a victim of his experimental mania. What particular crotchet could he have been humoring in this case? Was it an attempt to get back to the early sense of the ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... much curious information; but are deformed by the author attempting to wrest the text of the Norwegian writer (at p. 358. and in note I.) to suit an absurd crotchet of his own. Having seen that essay in MS., I pointed out those errors; but instead of attending to my observations, he would not read them, and got into a passion against the friend who showed the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... Semiquaver Friars; 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 holy friars had usually ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... 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 ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... 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 as ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... 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 ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... going to move; partly to his being connected with a thing that paid; partly to his knowing when he was well off, and leaving the reflected meat to the inverted dog in the water; partly to a stubborn crotchet which made him hold the giver of usury, as well as the taker, to be beyond the pale of mercy; partly to a fine administrative ability; partly to the avoidance of expensive habits—partly to all these combined, but chiefly to the fact that ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... 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 the kind ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... drink oatmeal-water unless they are paid to do it. If they are paid extra beer-money and oatmeal water is made for them gratis, some will, of course, imbibe it, especially if they see that thereby they may obtain little favours from their employer by yielding to his fad. By drinking the crotchet perhaps they may get a present now and then-food for themselves, cast-off clothes for their families, and so on. For it is a remarkable feature of human natural history, the desire to proselytise. The spectacle of John Bull—jovial John Bull—offering his men a bucket ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... Betty, 's your lady dead?" Madam, aside, an ample mouthful takes, Curtsies, looks kind, but not a word she speaks: Wondering, he stared, scarcely his eyes believed, But found his ears agreeably deceived. "Why, how now, Molly, what's the crotchet now?" She smiles, and answers only with a bow. Then clasping her about,—"Why, let me die! These nightclothes, Moll, become thee mightily!" With that, he sighed, her hand began to press, And Betty calls, her lady to undress; "Nay, kiss ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... dangerous thing to hang the doctrine of reconciliation or redemption on a slender hook, when there are strong ones plenty to hang it on. But it is not the Christian doctrine of redemption for which Mr. W. labors so zealously, but a theory, a crotchet, an invention of the elders. The doctrine itself requires no labored proof, no doubtful criticisms, no learned or unlearned inquiry into Greek and Hebrew etymologies. It lies on the surface of the sacred page. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... be said of either, if both had not been, not perhaps blasphemous but parsimonious of praise, towards "Our Lady of the Rocks." It cannot be too often or too solemnly laid down that an adoration of Madame de Sevigne as a letter-writer is not crotchet or fashion or affectation—is no result of merely taking authority on trust. The more one reads her, and the more one reads others, the more convinced should one be of her absolute non-pareility in almost every kind ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Pergolesi? Or through the world with comfort go, That never heard of Doctor Blow? So help me heaven, 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 world with Jubal, Before that dirty blacksmith Tubal By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut. I care no more for Cimarosa, Than he did for Salvator ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... liquid, surd, And breaks in syllables the volant word. Then forms the next upon the marshal'd plain In deepening ranks his dexterous cypher-train; And counts, as wheel the decimating bands, 130 The dews of AEgypt, or Arabia's sands, And then the third on four concordant lines Prints the lone crotchet, and the quaver joins; Marks the gay trill, the solemn pause inscribes, And parts with bars the undulating tribes. 135 Pleased round her cane-wove throne, the applauding crowd Clap'd their rude hands, their ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... wrong side of the work instead of the right. Now crochet the two 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 d.c. ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... Another philosophical crotchet did no small mischief. It was alleged that hard labour on the tread-mill would do harm: knowing that the labour tended to no useful purpose but merely the turning of a wheel, prisoners would feel degraded, and this feeling would prevent their reclamation! ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... with a Brussels carpet, papered with brown, and hung with a lithograph of Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair," an engraved copy of Herring's "Village Blacksmith," and two smaller ones, of "The Stable" and "The Barn Yard," from the same artist. A table and bureau, spread with crotchet work, eight chairs and the bed, were all the furniture. Upon this bed, a low walnut four-poster, lay the dying President; the blood oozing from the frightful wound in his head and staining the pillow. All that the medical skill of ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... Anglican system itself is not found complete in those early centuries; so that the [Anglican] principle [of Antiquity] is self-destructive." "When a man takes up this Via Media, he is a mere doctrinaire;" he is like those, "who, in some matter of business, start up to suggest their own little crotchet, and are ever measuring mountains with a pocket ruler, or improving the planetary courses." "The Via Media has slept in libraries; it is a substitute ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... adopted, probably, to excite a stronger interest in the perusal of his productions. Here, however, was a man in whom the principle existed upon what he considered rational and philosophic grounds. He had gotten the philosophical blockhead's crotchet into his head, and carried the principle, in a practical point of view, much further than ever the old fool himself did ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... occasions at the club in Ivy-lane. Here's all your healths, and Esto perpetua." "Bravo!" said Eglantine;" the boy improves. Now a toast, a university lass—come, boys, The Doctor's Daughter; and then a song from Crotchet C—ss."{4} ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle |
