"Crotchet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the 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, or bright anticipations, ...
— The Hall of Fantasy (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... It is a foolish and a 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. "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... playing them too frequently; her recent life had excited her too much, and never a sou in her pocket, only barely enough to eat ... it was ten times worse than in Rathbone Place.... And then that new crotchet ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... abandon all thought of making the bow jump, also he must avoid pressing it on the string. The whole action must be free and bold and the tempo for this exercise should be not slower than M.M. crotchet 100. At first it will be found impossible to get as far as the semiquavers without some confusion. At the first sign of irregularity the pupil should stop, pause a moment, and then recommence with the semibreves. It should be seen that the bow is not gripped too tightly through over-anxiety ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... 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 half a dozen accomplished surgeons could do had been done to ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... not understand the joy Beatrice felt over the crude gifts of the fishermen's wives, nor her ecstasy when a poor girl whom she had once befriended, brought her a dozen yards of narrow and very dirty crotchet edging. Beatrice almost kissed that edging, and her eyes filled with tears as she folded it ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... in the tone of this note which gave me great uneasiness. Its whole style differed materially from that of Legrand. What could he be dreaming of? What new crotchet possessed his excitable brain! What "business of the highest importance" could HE possibly have to transact? Jupiter's account of him boded no good. I dreaded lest the continued pressure of misfortune had, at length, fairly unsettled the reason of my friend. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... he let drop, I fancy he has a crotchet in his head that his lordship will find him some work when he comes home. But I must go on my way," added Mirrable. "Mrs. Gum's not well, and I sent word I'd look in for half-an-hour ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "Musicks a crotchet the sober think vain, The fiddle's a wooden projection, Tunes are but flirts of a whimsical brain, Which the bottle brings best to perfection: Musicians are half-witted, merry and mad, The same are all those that admire 'em, They're fools if they play unless they're well ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... disturbs that estimate, not the less all such consequences leave the dispute exactly where it was; and if a balance of reason can be found for limiting the extent of the word aeonian, it will not be the less true because it may happen to disturb a crotchet of ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... we 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 ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... relations and intercourse, and tenderness to all created things which the good of the community does not require them to destroy. And though their notion of compensation to a tortured insect or a cankered flower may seem to some of us a very wild crotchet, yet, at least, is not a mischievous one; and it may furnish matter for no unpleasing reflection to think that within the abysses of earth, never lit by a ray from the material heavens, there should have penetrated so luminous a conviction of the ineffable goodness of the Creator—so fixed an idea ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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
... 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 effect ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... bachelor, and live as one. So much the better, eh? If you will get your boxes sent up to Craigie Cottage, Malabar Hill—any one will tell ye where Elihu Sanderson lives—I will try to make you comfortable. You are wondering at the name 'Craigie Cottage'—another crotchet of my father's. He was a Scotchman, I'd have ye know; and so am I, for that matter, though I never saw Scotch soil, being that prodigious phenomenon, a British child successfully reared in India. But I hope to set foot there some day, please God! Save us! how I am talking, and in office hours, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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! The error here consisted ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various |
