ON the last occasion when I made a lengthened stay in London, my wife and I were surprised and amused one morning by the receipt of the following note, addressed to me in a small, crabbed, foreign-looking handwriting.英文原著 · 《AFTER DARK》
You are a captious, caviling, carping, crabbed, contentious, cantankerous chap. Hoot mon! an' why shouldna I drap into Scotch gin I choose? An' I with a Mac in my name.英文原著 · 《Dear Enemy》
Barten Holyday, who translated both Juvenal and Persius, has made this distinction betwixt them, which is no less true than witty-- that in Persius, the difficulty is to find a meaning; in Juvenal, to choose a meaning; so crabbed is Persius, and so copious is Juvenal; so much the understanding is employed in one, and so much the judgment in the other; so difficult is it to find any sense in the former, and the best sense of the latter.英文原著 · 《Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry》
Lady Isabel's carriage continued its way, and deposited her at the residence of Mrs. Levison. Levison was nearly eighty years of age, and very severe in speech and manner, or, as Mrs. Vane expressed it, "crabbed." She looked the image of impatience when Isabel entered, with her cap pushed all awry, and pulling at the black satin gown, for Mrs. Vane had kept her waiting dinner, and Isabel was keeping her from her tea; and that does not agree with the aged, with their health or with their temper.英文原著 · 《East Lynne》
"Heats and jealousies," says Lord Clarendon himself: "heats and jealousies," mere crabbed whims, theories and crotchets; these induced slow sober quiet Englishmen to lay down their ploughs and work; and fly into red fury of confused war against the best-conditioned of Kings! _Try_ if you can find that true. Scepticism writing about Belief may have great gifts; but it is really _ultra vires_ there. It is Blindness laying down the Laws of Optics.--英文原著 · 《Heroes and Hero Worship》