"Crotchety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... We will simply call him a governor, not troubling ourselves with his qualifications, as of course they have not been considered at the Colonial Office. He may be an upright, clear-headed, indefatigable man, in the prime of life, or he may be old, crotchety, pigheaded, and mentally and physically incapable. He may be either; it does not much matter, as he can only remain for five years, at ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... 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 ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... light. It was to amuse, to instruct, to interest,—there was nothing it was not to 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 ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the kindest of letters from dear noble Mr. Kenyon; who, by the way, speaks of you as we like to hear him. Dickens is going to Paris for the winter, and Mrs. Butler[151] (he adds) is expected in London. Dear Mr. Kenyon calls me 'crotchety,' but Robert 'an incarnation of the good and the true,' so that I have everything to thank him for. There are noble people who take the world's side and make it seem 'for the nonce' almost respectable; but he gives up all ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... her. She mustn't give it up. With her help—and you know in the management she's simply wonderful—with her help, I think I shall be able to bring something about that'll startle folks. Only, she mustn't throw me over. And she mustn't get too crotchety with the boarders. I've had some difficulty in that line, as it is. In fact, I've had to be rather cross. You know about the Boutwoods, for instance! Well, I've smoothed that over.... It's nothing, nothing—if she'll ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... was glad to see that Ruth had found a new interest. Bella waited on the supper table, was snapped at by Miss Timmins, and driven from pillar to post by that crotchety individual. ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... discreetly down. "There's no use trying to do anything with her. We've tried and tried and tried, but she just will have her way. She doesn't seem to understand that we've grown up—Mildred and I. She still wants to boss us just as she did when we were children. And she grows more crotchety and more ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... the canoe. Of course, the old woman began to busy herself with the two little girls, in the usual occupation of old women here, during their idle moments; and though she left off at our earnest request, she evidently thought us very crotchety ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Mother Dalton—had, in remote eighteen hundred and twenty, been a squalling, crabbed baby, and had apparently started life determined to be crotchety. If she had adhered to this schedule she would have been buried before she was sixty and would have been glad to go. But Old Dalton—then young Dave Dalton—married her out of hand at seventeen, and so remade and conserved ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... every organization founded on questions of the remotest interest would combine to secure representation. Mr. Disraeli declared it to be "opposed to every sound principle, its direct effect being to create a stagnant representation ... an admirable scheme for bringing crotchety men into the House." Mr. Shaw-Lefevre condemned it as "a vicious principle based upon a theory of classes," and Mr. Gladstone said that it regarded electors "not as rational and thinking beings, but merely as the equivalents of one another." Walter Bagehot, in ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth |
