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More "Crotchety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him, but it was made plain that his 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
... 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 ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... the music we have the first-fruits of Wagner's walks amongst the Swiss mountains. When he sent the book of the Ring to Schopenhauer, that crotchety critic wrote in it that it seemed mainly concerned with clouds; and truly it very largely is. The Rhinegold ends with a storm, the flash of lightning and the roar of thunder; in each Act of the Valkyrie there is a storm; ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... George, devilish true! Here's Julia must grow into a crotchety old female, myself into a solitary, embittered recluse, and you into a lonely, doddering old curmudgeon—and all for ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... lord and lady of the castle had decided to give into his hands the work to be done on 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 ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... sure 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 ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... dropped their standard far too much, and so the antagonism is not so plain as it ought to be, and as it used to be, and as, some day, it will be. But there it is, and if you are going to live out and out like a Christian man, you will get the old sneers flung at you. You will be 'crotchety,' 'impracticable,' 'spoiling sport,' 'not to be dealt with,' 'a wet blanket,' 'pharisaical,' 'bigoted,' and all the rest of the pretty words which have been so frequently used about the men that try to live like Jesus Christ. Never ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... Mrs. Crump, with a sigh, 'there ain't much more to tell. Jane says Mrs. Fairfax shuts herself up and won't see a single visitor; Miss Grace, the eldest daughter, who was never very strong, has become a confirmed invalid, with very crotchety and fidgety ways, and makes every one miserable who comes near her. Miss Nesta is the only one that keeps bright; and Jane says her temper is that sweet, she bears with all her sister's crossness and unreasonableness, and her mother's icy coldness, like an angel. She have had her ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... 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 ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... no 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 and ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... which looked steadily upon a complicated world of affairs, and a square, heavy chin which showed her capacity for dealing with it. Miss Ursula Winwood knew herself to be a notable person, and the knowledge did not make her vain or crotchety or imperious. She took her notability for granted, as she took her mature good looks and her independent fortune. For some years she had kept house for her widowed brother, Colonel Winwood, Conservative Member for the Division of the county in which they resided, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... was more in name than anything else, for old David, the missionary, ruled the island with a rod of iron, and was so crotchety and tyrannical that no Kanaka could call his soul his own. Every night at nine he stood out in front of his house and rang a hand bell, and then woe betide any one who didn't go to bed instanter and ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... returned to the table. She took the letter with the enclosed contract and read both of them. Her heart beat with joy, but she was exceedingly careful not to betray her state of mind to Daniel: she was afraid of his contradictory and crotchety disposition. She hardly dared look at him, as she waited in anxious suspense to see what ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... pretensions that way; but I can feel the pulse of a people, and can comprehend the signs of the times, Sybil. Stephen was all very well talking in our cottage and garden at Mowbray, when we had nothing to do; but now we must act, or others will act for us. Stephen is not a practical man; he is crotchety, Sybil, and that's ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... rising like a tide within her. Daddy's letter was delayed. She had not chanced to see any newspaper but the Courier of late. Why! even Uncle Jason's Ledger had not appeared on the sitting room table. She watched the hard old face of the crotchety Mrs. Scattergood in a fascination of ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... girl," said the commander, "since I saw you last I have come into a fortune of one hundred thousand livres, neither more nor less. One of my dear aunts took it into her head to depart this life, and her temper being crotchety and spiteful she made me her sole heir, in order to enrage those of her relatives who had nursed her in her illness. One hundred thousand livres! It's a round sum—enough to cut a great figure with for two years. If you like, we shall squander ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the disagreeable office, which seemed to him delightful by comparison with that other story of a runaway son en route in fancied disgrace for India. All's well that ends well. Mary Everard wept with grief, joy, and gratitude, and took her jewel to her arms without complaint or question. The crotchety father was disposed to have it out with either the knaves or the fools in the game, did not Arthur reduce him to ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... the chapel is in the hands of four deacons; but they are not very officious like some pillars of the church: one of them is mild and obliging, the second is wise-looking and crotchety, the third is disposed to pious rampagiousness in his lucid intervals, and the fourth is a kindly sort of being, with a moderate respect for converted dancers and hallaleujah men. Some theological writers say that there are "evangelists" ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... edition of his whole works. We do not reflect that a poet, always accustomed to labor immediately for the stage, who has often enjoyed the triumph of overpowering assembled crowds of spectators and drawing from them the most tumultuous applause, who the while was not dependent on the caprice of crotchety stage directors, but left to his own discretion to select and determine the mode of theatrical representation, naturally cares much less for the closet of the solitary reader. During the first formation of a national theatre, more especially, we find ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... people's faults! She has a pippin of a temper and such stub-stub-stubborn ways! Don't you think Thad's cartoons of 'Temperamental Therese' are peaches? Well, they are nothing but Felice in her illogical crotchety unfair minutes—Thad says the only way to explain such heavenly rudeness as Felicia's is to remember that she ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... important peculiarity shows that he must have been an odd and crotchety creature, but one with sense in his crotchets. He seems to have been annoyed by mispronunciation of his own and other work: and accordingly he adopts (with full warning and explanation) the plan of invariably doubling the consonant after ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... such a failure in her first. If Theo were not so restive, if you could get him to take things a little more easy—— Dear me, of course I trust in his honour; no one doubts that. But he will lead her a pretty dance; whether it will be better for her to have a good crotchety high-tempered young fellow who adores her, or a rough young scamp who ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... is left By a little crooked, crotchety man, Who cannot find his wayward son; When the horn begins to blow, He has to drop his light and run. Of course he limps so slow He squeezes through the very last, When he is gone the naughty scamp Jumps up and ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... than other people's faults! She has a pippin of a temper and such stub-stub-stubborn ways! Don't you think Thad's cartoons of 'Temperamental Therese' are peaches? Well, they are nothing but Felice in her illogical crotchety unfair minutes—Thad says the only way to explain such heavenly rudeness as Felicia's is to remember that she began ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... left hand, he said, "And here I pledge you the word of a soldier that I acknowledge the claim in full, not only for Hilland's sake, but your own. You have generously sought to beguile the tedium of a crotchety and irritable old man; but such as he is he gives you his hand as a true, stanch friend; and Grace knows this means a ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... 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 exertion, to ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... include his sister, Tabitha (and her maid, Jenkins), and his nephew, not overlooking the dog, Chowder. Clinker, who names the book, is a subsidiary character, merely a servant in Bramble's establishment. The crotchety Bramble and his acidulous sister, who is a forerunner of Mrs. Malaprop in the unreliability of her spelling, and Lieutenant Lishmahago, who has been complimented as the first successful Scotchman in fiction—all these ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... exclaimed at last, "I'm a curious crotchety sort of fellow. Had too much law, and got coated over with it; but I'm not bad inside when ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... care," she said at length. "Hers isn't a very practical mind. It's impossible to say about Judge Tiffany. He's crotchety. The right's on your side, for a man has a right to change his employment, hasn't he? And I'm sure you have more than returned your little salary. On the whole, I don't know but it would be better for you with Eleanor if the Judge did get angry with you. A girl ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... James Laurence is a crotchety old fellow and not to be depended on. So you intend to marry a man without money, position, or business, and go on working harder than you do now, when you might be comfortable all your days by minding me and doing better? I thought ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Philip and Amy moved on in search of ice. 'Hum!' said Philip to himself, causing Amy to gaze up at him, but he was musing too intently for her to venture on a remark. She was thinking that she did not wonder that strangers deemed Guy crotchety, since he was so difficult to understand; and then she considered whether to take him to see King Charles, in the library, and concluded that she would wait, for she felt as if the martyr king's face would look on her too gravely to suit ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... idle to speculate on what might have been the future of Henry, Prince of Wales, had he lived to fulfil the bright promise of his boyhood. To a singularly well-balanced mind, he appears to have joined an amiability of character that endeared him to all save the crotchety doctrinaire who sat upon the throne. He loved hunting and hawking and all healthy open-air pursuits no less than he loved books, and the society of men, who were the history-makers of his day. He would visit Sir Walter ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... be forgotten by any reader of those reminiscences. Pedant, she says, was written in every line of his countenance and every movement that he made. He was possessed of some varied learning, much narrow prejudice, and a violent, crotchety temper, but had proved during the troubles of the Revolution his sincere and disinterested devotion to the family he served, and Aurore and "the great man," as she afterwards nicknamed her old tutor, were ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... same, the 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 ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... odd, strange, bizarre, extraordinary, peculiar, uncommon, comical, fantastic, preposterous, unique, crotchety, funny, quaint, unmatched, curious, grotesque, ridiculous, unusual, droll, laughable, singular, whimsical. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... because he thought it was well founded. Another murder in the neighbourhood would certainly vex the authorities, and put the police in a bad temper. Bouzille knew from experience that the first thing people do after a tragedy is to arrest all the tramps, and that if the police are at all crotchety they always contrive to get the tramps sentenced for something else. He had had a momentary inclination to establish his winter quarters in prison, but since then he had formed the plan of ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... The "dogmatical and 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 ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... said the commander, "since I saw you last I have come into a fortune of one hundred thousand livres, neither more nor less. One of my dear aunts took it into her head to depart this life, and her temper being crotchety and spiteful she made me her sole heir, in order to enrage those of her relatives who had nursed her in her illness. One hundred thousand livres! It's a round sum—enough to cut a great figure with for two years. If you like, we shall squander it together, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... only shows you," said the porter confidentially, "how people are very often blamed for something they did not do. The tenant in the next flat is a bit crotchety; he's a musician, and rather deaf. If he hadn't been deaf, he wouldn't have said that Miss Rider was the cause of his being wakened up. I suppose it was ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... don't suppose 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 over again ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... Helen, coaxing. "You must excuse Mr. Hazel; these learned men are so crotchety in some things, and go by books; but you and I go by our senses, and to us a cabbage is a cabbage, grow where it will. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... 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 more ...
— The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl • Jerome K. Jerome
... do. Not a man in the whole reading public, not only of the three kingdoms, not only of the British empire, but under the cope of heaven, that it was not to touch somewhere, in head, in heart, or in pocket. The most crotchety member of the intellectual community might find his own hobby in ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... surprised to see the girl. Nothing could be so bizarre in the world, that his cloudy, crotchety brain did not accept it, and make a commonplace matter out of it. It never occurred to him to wonder how she came there. He stood with folded arms, his bony shoulders bolstering up the board wall, watching her as she knelt, her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... together, or to discriminate between them, or to denote their peculiarities, in that case he has no hesitation in undertaking any subject, and perhaps has most to say upon those questions which are most new to him. This is why so many men are one-sided, narrow-minded, prejudiced, crotchety. This is why able men have to change their minds and their line of action in middle age, and to begin life again, because they have followed their party, instead of having secured that faculty of true perception as regards intellectual objects which ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... of Auntie, Mr Ellis,' she said with a smile, while the old woman's back was turned. 'Poor old body, she's a bit crotchety at times, as old women are. She doesn't like me to get talking about the children. She's got an idea that if I do I'll start talking nonsense, as I used to do the first year after the children were lost. I was very foolish then, wasn't ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... peculiarities and propensities of the parents, instead of being modified and perhaps obliterated in the children by corresponding differences in character, would be doubly exaggerated. The children of selfish parents would be thieves; those of spendthrifts, beggars; those of crotchety parents, monomaniacs; those born of sensual parents, beastly debauchees. A few generations of such a degenerating process would either exterminate the race or drive it back to Darwin's ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... the nurse is either the comfort or the torment of the house. Everyone also knows innumerable young mothers who put up with inexcusable crankiness from a crotchety middle-aged woman because she was "so wonderful" to the baby. And here let it be emphasized that such an one usually turns out to have been not wonderful to the baby at all. That she does not actually abuse a helpless infant is ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... older, he grew dogmatic and crotchety in the extreme. He imitated Carlyle in his scoldings, and indeed was much influenced by Carlyle in many ways. He has always been an impracticable theorist, and in these latter years he has put forth a thousand foolish and ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
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