"Dabble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Captain Henderson the very last person in the world to dabble in the occult, as they call it in the newspapers. I should have thought he would ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... story? Why, yes. If Henry, there, will translate it And put it in verse and print as he promised To do when it happened. Will he do it? I doubt. He dislikes to dabble with rhyme and with measure. Says that good honest prose is the best and the sweetest If the words be well chosen, short, Saxon, and pithy. And that making of verse is the business of women, Of green boys at school, and of lovers when spooning. But try him. It may be he will. For a lesson ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... move to make an' when to make it. If Molly is one thing she is game. We've got a good deal out of the mine an' it's all come so far from the sale of gold to the mint, I take it. We don't dabble in stocks. We're ahead. If the mine's gone bu'st she's done nicely by ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... animal life, and that he had even embellished the outside of his blinds with the most ridiculous paintings, did not disconcert me in the least; on the contrary, it confirmed my belief that he did not dabble in music, until, to my horror, I discovered that the strangely discordant sounds of a harp which kept reaching my ears from some unknown region were actually proceeding from his basement, where he had two harpsichords of his own invention. He informed me that he had unfortunately neglected playing ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... sellers of stocks are indirectly performing the function of adjusting demand and supply, and so regulating industry. So far as they are expert business men trained in the knowledge of a particular market this may be so. So far as they dabble in the market in the hope of profiting from a favourable turn, they appear rather as gamblers. I will not pretend to determine which of the two is the larger class. I would point out only that, on the face of the facts, the profits derived from this particular ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... the ship, that her course was all but run; so, taking my companion by the hand, I led her right aft to the wheel grating, which we both mounted; and then I peered over the stern at the black water. Merciful Heaven, how near it was! it looked as though one could lean over the rail and dabble one's hand in it. But it was clear; there was no wreckage or anything else—so far as I could see—to hurt us, should we leap. A lifebuoy was hanging over the taffrail, suspended by a stout lanyard; and this buoy I hurriedly ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... dost thou hope to stay Time's dread advance till thou hast had thy day? Dost think the Strangler will release his hold Because, forsooth, some fibs remain untold? No, no—beneath thy multiplying load Of years thou canst not tarry on the road To dabble in the blood thy leaden feet Have pressed from bosoms that have ceased to beat Of reputations margining thy way, Nor wander from the path new truth to slay. Tell to thyself whatever lies thou wilt, Catch as thou canst at pennies ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... myself. I began to see more clearly that it doesn't do for a man of scruples to dabble in politics. I had a great regard for poor Johnny, and I felt no confidence in the colonel treating him with any consideration. In fact, I would not have insured Johnny's life for the next week at any ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... who is a cautious man, has publicly admitted hypnotic suggestion. He thinks extraordinary curative effects, so far as the consciousness of pain goes, are to be derived from hypnotism, which is Mesmerism with a new Greek name. But he always exhorts laics not to dabble in it, and medical men to keep their hypnotic lore to themselves. This is charming after the way in which the profession of which Charcot is really a bright light treated Mesmerism. Mesmer was an empiric. But he nevertheless got ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... especially metaphysicians, have any peculiar tendency to dabble in drugs and dose themselves with physic, is a question which might suggest itself to the reader of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... gambling for ever, but a tendency still more dangerous, and in some respects involving an even greater moral defect,—I mean a tendency, chiefly due, I think, to a very deep-seated pride,—to prefer inferior men as working colleagues in business. And yet it is clear that if Scott were to dabble in publishing at all, he really needed the check of men of larger experience, and less literary turn of mind. The great majority of consumers of popular literature are not, and indeed will hardly ever be, literary men; and that is precisely why a ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... his brethren at every street corner!" continued she. "Well; I didn't mean to dabble in witchcraft to-day, further than the lighting of my pipe, but a witch I am, and a witch I'm likely to be, and there's no use trying to shirk it. I'll make a man of my scarecrow, were it only ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that the Musgraves usually "drank,"—just as the Allardyces notoriously perpetuated the taint of insanity, and the Townsends were proverbially unable "to let women alone," and the Vartreys were deplorably prone to dabble in literature. These things had been for a long while just as they were to-day; and therefore (Lichfield ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... indeed, but in virtue and propriety; for as the unicorn purified pools and fountains from filth and venom, so that other animals came and drank securely there afterwards, in the like manner others might water their nags, and dabble after him without fear of shankers, carnosities, gonorrhoeas, buboes, crinkams, and such other plagues caught by those who venture to quench their amorous thirst in a common puddle; for with his nervous horn he removed all the infection that might ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... bream have left, satisfied, a little group of thumbling hornpouts come and grub and dabble in the muddy hole whence the unio came, feeding upon I know not what; probably tiny infusoriae of the fresh water. These little black cats are the busiest folk of the brook at this time of the year, and just whence they come or whither they go I cannot say. If ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... an investment in oil, and came out about even on the race-track. Up to this time, however, he had never indulged in the luxury of a theatrical venture, notwithstanding the hankering he had at times to dabble in that direction. As soon as he saw Handy he called him aside and began a little preliminary skirmishing, and in a roundabout way started in to lay bare the strenuous thoughts that were agitating his mind. He opened up ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... Now, look here, Kettle. This mystery game has gone on long enough, and you've got to be put on the ground floor, like the rest of us. Did you ever dabble in stocks?" ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... could not make out one word of his paraphernally. It minded me, by all the world, of a wheen cats fuffing and fighting through ither, and whiles something that sounded like "Sugar, sugar, measure the cord," and "dabble dabble." It was worse than the most outrageous Gaelic ever spoken in the height of passion by ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... quacks in medicine, excite the malady to profit by the cure, and retard the cure to augment the fees. As the quack exhausts the constitution the pettifogger exhausts the purse; and as he who has once been under the hands of a quack is for ever after prone to dabble in drugs, and poison himself with infallible prescriptions, so the client of the pettifogger is ever after prone to embroil himself with his neighbors, and impoverish himself with successful lawsuits. My readers will excuse this digression into which I have been unwarily betrayed; but I could ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Suabians who went to hunt a monster,—"a Ungeheuer,"—and returned with a hare. Elsie Venner is not a hare; she is a wonderful creation; but she is a winter-snake. I confess that I have no patience, however, with those who pretend to show us summer-snakes, and would fain dabble with vice; who are amateurs in the diabolical, and drawing-room dilettanti in damnation. Such, as I have said before, are the aesthetic adorers of Villon, whom the old roue himself would have most despised, and the admirers of "Faustine," whom Faustina would have picked ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... source of grievance and friction between the eldest and youngest hope of the house. The poor boy had not many changes of raiment, and he being of an age to dabble in any mess that came handy without reference to his sister's olfactory nerves, there was no denying the fact that his little brown tunic, his worn little trousers had acquired a very boyey smell. Unless under the protection of his mother's presence, therefore, he was often exiled to the kitchen ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... old, men and women, regard trade as the great affair of life, take to it as soon as they can toddle, and don't even leave it off at death, according to their own accounts of the way the spirits of distinguished traders still dabble and interfere in market matters. But it is otherwise with the Bubi. A little rum, a few beads, and finish—then he will turn the rest of his attention to catching porcupines, or the beautiful little gazelles, gray on the back, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park to-morrow morning, after breakfast? If we only live like fighting-cocks, and go in perpetually for public amusements, we shall arrive in no time at the mens sana in corpore sano of the ancients. Don't be alarmed at the quotation, sir. I dabble a little in Latin after business hours, and enlarge my sympathies by occasional perusal of the Pagan writers, assisted by a crib. William, dinner at five; and, as it's particularly important to-day, I'll ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the dayspring began definitely to dabble in its chromatic chemistries Loveday at last remarked: "Did you ever think why I took such pains to get you to come down with me to Lord Woolacot's last autumn ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... King find Miss Benson, and when he encountered her after dinner in the reading-room, she confessed that she had declined an invitation to assist at the mind-reading, partly from a lack of interest, and partly from a reluctance to dabble in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Catherine's imaginative mind, but the dark suspicions she harbours about General Tilney are not altogether inexplicable. He is so much less natural and so much more stagey than the other characters that he might reasonably be expected to dabble in the sinister. This time Catherine is misled by memories of the Sicilian Romance into weaving a mystery around the fate of Mrs. Tilney, whom she pictures receiving from the hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food. She watches in vain for "glimmering lights," like those in the ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... lovely clear pools on the rocky shore, natural stone baths left full of water when the tide went out, sheltered from the wind by tall, dark, precipitous cliffs, and warmed by the sun; and there they used to dabble by the hour together. Anne went with them, and it was a pretty sight, the four young women in white chemises that clung to them when wet, and the three lovely children—little white nudities with bright brown hair—scampering ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... has also become active. He desires to dabble in science. One day he studies the Arab mystics, Oriental legends, and the next, he studies the marine fauna, etc. His perceptions have never been so clear. His brain is in continual activity. "It is strange," he acknowledges, "what a different man I am becoming mentally from what I was formerly. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... "I, as an educationist, dabble a little in geology, mineralogy, and palaeontology. My friend is a botanist. You are Mr. Rawdon. Allow me, Mr. Rawdon, to introduce my friend Mr. Eugene Coristine, of Osgood Hall, Barrister, and my humble self, Farquhar Wilkinson, of ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... course, every tree and hole and stream and almost every stone and bird's nest about your own home in the country; you will never get to know any other place so well again in your life, for when one is grown up one can't climb trees and dabble in streams and build huts and root about in the earth. Jesus was just a natural boy; He grew to know all the byways between the little gardens, all the trees which bore figs or pomegranates or olives or oranges, and He climbed the hills around with other lads ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... I am quite sure you do me the justice to believe that I do not willingly give cause for offence. Without going as far as Robert, who holds that I 'couldn't be coarse if I tried,' (only that!) you will grant that I don't habitually dabble in the dirt; it's not the way of my mind or life. If, therefore, I move certain subjects in this work, it is because my conscience was first moved in me not to ignore them. What has given most offence ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... you that. I never myself trust him with a case, for I will not employ barristers who dabble in politics. But you can get his address from the 'Gazette des Tribuneaux'; he is ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... the dealing in livings but the thinking they can buy the Holy Ghost for money which vulgar rich people indulge in when they dabble ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... sins, fated to continue so to the end of the chapter—i.e., our interminable rhymes; til, tired of exchanging our bad prose for worse poetry, (and having the fear of his maledictions before our eyes,) we throw it aside in a pet. Then comes a change over our spirit; and we dabble in paint-pots, and flourish a palette, and are great on canvass, and in chalks, and there is a mingled perfume of oil and turpentine in our studio (whilome study) that is to us highly refreshing, and good against fainting; and we make tours in search of the picturesque, climbing over stone walls, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... ushers themselves; and much to Jack's annoyance, when Squire Bull succeeded, the latter had taken care in his bargain with him, to keep the right of appointment to these in his own hand. But, at the same time, he told Jack fairly, that as he had no wish to dabble in Latin, Greek, or school learning himself, he left him at full liberty to say whether those whom he appointed were fit for the situation or not—so that if they turned out to be ignoramuses, deboshed fellows, or drunken dogs, Jack had only to say so on good grounds, and they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... his hair complacently.] Funny, your remark. As a matter of fact, I used to dabble a little in pen-and-ink as ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... present day. However, as the ancients tell us that a Poet cannot be a manufactured creature, and as I have not the smallest pretensions to the "rhyming art," [although in former times[14] I did venture to dabble with it] I must of necessity have recourse to Prose; and, at the same time, to your candour and forbearance in ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... it than with this, that or the other more technical thrifty scheme. Of the beauty of his dissimulated anxiety and tenderness on these and various other suchlike heads, however, other examples will arise; for I see him now as fairly afraid to recognise certain anxieties, fairly declining to dabble in the harshness of practical precautions or impositions. The effect of his attitude, so little thought out as shrewd or as vulgarly providential, but in spite of this so socially and affectionally founded, could only be to make life interesting to us at the worst, in default of making it extraordinarily ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... against his horrible presence it finally began to sap their courage. Besides, the lake fascinated Alpha, now but three years old but large and strong. He loved to wander by its shore and dabble in the water, but so long as the beast remained, an ever present danger was in this play. Besides there was the fear that he might escape the watchfulness of his parents and come in contact with one of the high ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... look for mine," said Grizzel. "I hid it in a tree near here. I am tired of gold-digging, and my feet are hot. I shall dabble them in the creek and eat ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... said he with the book, "how comes it that a young gentleman like you, a sedate student at the first appearance, should dabble in stocks and that sort ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the fashion of every writer of eminence, as well as every pretender to letters, among the Romans to dabble with the drama, there were a multitude of tragic poets whose names were soon forgotten, and many whose names alone are incidentally mentioned while their works shared the fate of their bodies, and were buried in their graves. Gracelius wrote a tragedy ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... strange, its effect upon the young man was at least equally unforeseen. Greif had always despised persons who professed to dabble in the supernatural, and had laughed to scorn all the so-called manifestations of spiritualism, mesmerism, and super- rational force. When he had heard that the great astronomer Zollner had written a book to explain the performances of Slade, the medium, by means of ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... sun, and the swings and poles in the gymnasium had blistered and cracked in solitude. The only place where life was endurable was down by the river, and even there it was far too hot to do anything but sit and dabble our feet under the shelter of the ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... and in his heart of hearts Ferguson thought Languor was, on the whole, more melodious than Dolores. But that was, of course, purely a matter of opinion. At any rate, it was a fine composition; and a poet must not dabble in the common ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... only invent new ways of hatching out wire-worms! Yet all may really depend on the first chance direction which led one brother as a boy to buy a butterfly net, and sent the other into the school laboratory to dabble with an electric ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Neither the slashing, nor the puffing, nor the faintly praising notice will be meted out to them. There will be a conspiracy of silence. The very circulating libraries will be threatened, and coffins (stolen from undertakers who dabble in romance) will be laid at Mr. Mudie's door, unless he casts off the amateur in fiction. The professionals will march through rapine to emancipation. They will strike off the last gyves that fetter the noble art of romance, and in ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... and Rebecca's father, who were beginning to dabble in the fur trade, had jointly hired a peripatetic dominie to give us youngsters lessons in Bible history and the three R's. At noon hour I initiated Rebecca into all the thrilling dangers of Indian ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... give these people, so to speak, a right to meddle and dabble in her heart? Was she to be wept over by Sister Angela—to confess her sins to Father Bowles—still worse, to Father Leadham? As she asked herself the question, she shrank in sudden passion from the whole world of ideas concerned—from all those stifling notions of sin, ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Tall, stately trees, with waving green foliage, bordered the water. For a long moment it lay there, smiling in the sun, a thing almost tangible; and then it faded. I felt a sense of actual loss. So real had been the illusion that I could not believe I was not soon to drink and wade and dabble in the cool waters. Disappointment was keen. This is what maddens the prospector or sheep-herder lost in the desert. Was it not a terrible thing to be dying of thirst, to see sparkling water, almost to smell it and then realize suddenly ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... merchants borrowed money at the bank. In neither instance did the purchaser own outright what he sought to sell at an advance; merely in one case it was shares, in the other merchandise. Of course it was foolish for inexperienced country folk with small means to dabble in stocks and bonds, but why should not city people who were clever and had clever friends in the business eke out the cost of living by shrewd investments? In an old-fashioned sense it might be considered gambling; but, if it were true, as Wilbur ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... at those children down there!' said the queen, sobbing and pointing to them. 'Did you ever see anybody so happy? Why can't I have mud to dabble in too, and why can't I take off my shoes and stockings, and amuse myself like the children do, instead of being so dull and stuck-up all ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mood To dabble in blood: To wage a great war. Shall we have gold enough? 390 Shall we have ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... regular hands will give you a chance of getting much. There's Sam Holly and Jerry Dabble. One's a bully ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... the Assyrian useless to dabble in: it is so vast, so fragmentary, so embarrassed by dogmatic hypotheses and assertions, and deterring complications, that one must give oneself wholly to it for any chance of getting to its foundations. But I feel on perfectly solid ground in Medo- Persian or Scythian. ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Arctic Circle to the Gulf, had taken stop-over checks for the Glimmerglass; and now they came loitering along through the dead bulrushes, murmuring gently, in soft, mild voices, of delicious minnows and snails, and pausing a moment now and then to put their heads under and dabble in the mud for some particularly choice morsel. The lynxes crouched and waited, while their stubby tails twitched nervously, their long, narrow pupils grew still narrower, and their paws fumbled about among the dry pine-needles, feeling for ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... the sun baking me more than was pleasant, I would rouse myself with an effort, and running down to the fringe of rushes that bordered the full-brimmed river, plunge again headlong into the quiet brown water, and dabble and swim till I was once more weary! For innocent animal delight, I know of nothing to match those days—so warm, yet so pure-aired—so clean, so glad. I often think how God must love his little children to have invented for them such ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... to that kind of thing," Geof answered; "you know I don't pretend to paint. My business is with bricks and mortar. It's only when I'm loafing that I dabble in colours." ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... am free to confess that I have no personal desire to dabble in philanthropy, or conduct schools of any kind; my hands are full ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... had visited either the race-course or any other place of amusement. Now he might face his kind without fear that his pride should be mortified, and dabble in the fascinating agitations ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... scientific attainments; however, with true intuition, our authors are not afraid to assume the burden and pose as scientists. It has surely not escaped your attention that in all our history we have never produced a thinker; never mind, our authors dabble in philosophy, and everybody thinks they do it splendidly. It seems highly unjust to complain because of a lack of appreciation of and ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... idler parts of his life, Howard had been pleased to dabble somewhat in medicine, after the manner of the gentlemen of his time. This stood him in good part upon his travels, and made him familiar with the various forms of disease that especially afflicted prisons and the people at large. For jail fever ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... you are not an uncommon type,—a type not strong enough to live life healthily, just strong enough to dabble in life, to trifle with emotions, to experiment with other people's lives. Indeed, I am not angry, dear; I am only—sorry; for you have played with me very nicely indeed, and very boyishly, and the summer has ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... the speculating Chevalier so great a loser as to cause his bankruptcy. Whether such is the real cause or not, it is difficult to ascertain what could induce the Chevalier to descend from his dealings with the head to dabble with lower commodities. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... for this is that, in studying a character, no one is content with the plain and easy way of reaching an understanding of it—the way of looking only at its ACTS. We all love to dabble in the metaphysical, to examine and weigh motives and intentions, to compare ourselves and make wildly erroneous judgment inevitable by listening to the man's WORDS—his professions, always more or less dishonest, though perhaps not always ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... been ducks, we might dabble in mud: Or dogs, we might play till it ended in blood; So foul, or so fierce are their natures. But Thomas and William, and such pretty names, Should be cleanly and harmless as doves, or as lambs, Those ...
— Divine Songs • Isaac Watts
... I had that in me deep down, and still, Of which you, you alone, possess the key, A sullen nobleness to you disclosed E'en then with shame: and by no other guessed. This you well know: betray not that at least; For even the lightest woman here is scared, And dreads to dabble deeper in the soul. We ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... would have prevented his long and useless wanderings. Like many other persons, too, whom I have known—just in proportion to his lack of penetrative power was his tendency to occupy himself with difficult questions. By a cruel destiny he was impelled to dabble in matters for which he was totally unfitted. He never could go beyond his author a single step, and he lost himself in endless mazes. If he could but have been persuaded to content himself with sweet presentations ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... was all excellent well as far as it went; but still there was something wanted of more reality than the improvisations of a romancist. Ainsworth might dip his pen in the grossest epithets; Boz might dabble in the mysterious dens of Hebrew iniquity; even Bulwer might hash up to us his recollections of St. Giles's dialogue; and yet it was evident that they were all the while only "shamming"—only cooking up some dainty dish according to a recipe, or, as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... pace up and down the room with a vacant expression of countenance, and his eyes distended, the singularity of his aspect being often increased by an unshaven beard. Then he would seat himself at his table and write; and afterwards get up again to the washhand basin and dabble and hum as before. Ludicrous as were these scenes, no one dared venture to notice them, or to disturb him while engaged in his inspiring ablutions, for these were his ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... dabble her feet in the creek presented itself to her. Always she had liked to play in the water. What a delight now to take off her shoes and stockings and wade out into the shallows near the bank! She had worn low shoes that afternoon, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... it, or had some undefined antipathy which made it hateful to her. Such odd fancies are common enough in young persons in her nervous state. Many of these young people will jump up twenty times a day and run to dabble the tips of their fingers in water, after touching the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... official or unofficial quality, numerous Americans amorously dabble in International questions and laws. How much the rights of war, etc., have been discussed; how many letters, signed, anonymous, official and unofficial, have been published—and very little, if ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... matches for herself, And daughters, brothers, sisters, kith or kin, Arranging them like books on the same shelf, There's nothing women love to dabble in More (like a stock-holder in growing pelf) Than match-making in general: 't is no sin Certes, but a preventative, and therefore That is, no doubt, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... herself exclusively to the society of her friends and to literature."—"Ah, there it is! . . . Literature! Do you think I am to be imposed upon by that word? While discoursing on literature, morals, the fine arts, and such matters, it is easy to dabble in politics. Let women mind their knitting. If your mother were in Paris I should hear all sorts of reports about her. Things might, indeed, be falsely attributed to her; but, be that as it may, I will have nothing of the kind ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... index of his life, the measure of his success-power. The mere fact of his failure has interest; but how did he take his defeat? What did he do next? Was he discouraged? Did he slink out of sight? Did he conclude that he had made a mistake in his calling, and dabble in something else? Or was he up and at it again with a ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... them are prostituting a Christian profession to the worst of purposes. But this does not prove that there is anything defective or wrong about the Christian religion. No, by no means. If clergymen descend from their sacred vocation to dabble with politics, and a thousand other things that a minister of Christ should not touch; or to use their ministerial influence to accomplish the most diabolical purposes, and thereby bring reproach on the Christian name, and a grievous curse on the nation—then assuredly, ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... even asserts that he has counter-facts, but dare not state them, he is at once met with a praejudicium. The mere fact of his having ascertained the truth is imputed as a blame to him, in a sort of prudish cant. 'What a very improper person he must be to like to dabble in such improper books that they must not even be quoted.' If in self-defence he desperately gives his facts, he only increases the feeling against him, whilst the reactionists, hiding their blushing faces, find in their modesty an excuse for avoiding the truth; if, on ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... why I am not an artist—a great artist. I am hampered by an inheritance that allows me to live without working, so I don't do anything worth while. I only dabble at this and that. Some day, maybe, ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... have no desire to alleviate your confessed boredom. Your persistence would be praiseworthy if well directed. Waters wear away stone, the wind crumbles the marble, but a woman is not moved till she wishes to be. I never thought that I should dabble in an intrigue of this sort, and I am surprised at the amusement it affords me. I really owe you some gratitude. The few I have met who know you tell me that you are ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... ladies, who—generally old and childless themselves—love to gather round them the young and clever acolytes of literature and art, the enthusiastic devotees of science, the generous apprentices of constructive politics, for politicians who do not dabble in the reformation of society find other and more congenial haunts. This many-minded crowd of acolytes, and devotees, and apprentices, owe much to the hospitable women who bring them together in a sort of indulgent ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... not, which merely proves you are not a 'fly-cop,' only a measly busy-body sticking your nose into some one else's business. Well, we know how to take care of your kind, and this is likely to prove the last case you'll dabble in ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... honest woman, was so just to me as to lay it all out again for me, and gave me head-dresses, and linen, and gloves, and ribbons, and I went very neat, and always clean; for that I would do, and if I had rags on, I would always be clean, or else I would dabble them in water myself; but, I say, my good nurse, when I had money given me, very honestly laid it out for me, and would always tell the ladies this or that was bought with their money; and this made them ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... farmhouse, such as might well go with two or three hundred acres of tolerably good land, tolerably well farmed by an active old-fashioned tenant, who, though he did not use mowing-machines nor steam-ploughs nor dabble in chemical experiments, still brought an adequate capital to his land and made the capital yield a very fair return of interest. The supper was laid out in a good-sized though low-pitched parlour with a glazed door, now wide open, as were all the latticed ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... instruct the class which we were desirous of forming. The offer was eagerly seized upon, and so it came to pass that she had been installed as teacher and director of the mysteries in which we were about to dabble. ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... shall eat bread or saleratus, meat or sole-leather; but it certainly does depend upon yourself whether you shall wash yourself daily. I do not wish to be personal, but I verily believe, O companion of my childhood! that, until you began to dabble in Hydropathy, you had not bestowed a sincere ablution upon your entire person since the epoch when, twenty years ago, we took our last plunge together, off Titcomb's wharf, in our native village. That in your well-furnished house there are no hydraulic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... is allowed practically to do exactly as he likes in the holidays; he hates school cordially, and I don't wonder. He fortunately has one taste, and that is for science, and it is more than a taste, it is a real passion. He does not merely dabble about with chemicals, or play tricks with electricity; but he reads dry, hard, abstruse science, and writes elaborate monographs, which I read with more admiration than comprehension. This is almost his only hold on ordinary life, and I encourage it with all my might; I ask ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... problem is to accept the hypothesis that in early life he was in an attorney's office (!), that he there contracted a love for the law which never left him, that as a young man in London he continued to study or dabble in it for his amusement, to stroll in leisure hours into the Courts, and to frequent the society of lawyers. On no other supposition is it possible to explain the attraction which the law evidently had for him, and his minute and undeviating accuracy in a subject where no ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... horrible features of the war in a thickly-peopled city is to be found in the sufferings which it entails upon the innocent who are thus early familiarized with scenes of blood and violence, and who too often, unfortunately, are themselves the victims of them. The gamins of Paris love to dabble in petroleum and play with lucifer matches, and revel in destruction and conflagration. More daring than their elders, they stick with their mothers to barricades after the father of the family has deemed it prudent to retire, and numerous are the stories of their ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... began absently to dabble her slender brown hand in the water. A silence fell between them, with which Benjamin was well content, since it gave him a chance to feast his eyes on the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the story to convict himself, but suppresses everything which may convict her. How know I that this resistance in the carriage was more than a sham? How know I that he did not attend her in the house? That they did not dabble together on their way through the dark piazza—along the stairs?—Nay, what proof is there that he did not find his way, with polluting purpose, into the very chamber?—that chamber, from which, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... meantime frowned most ominously on Richie, who went on undauntedly to inform the king, "that his deceased father-in-law, a good careful man in the main, had a' touch of worldly wisdom about him, that at times marred the uprightness of his walk; he liked to dabble among his neighbour's gear, and some of it would at times stick to his fingers ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... on the walls. Burly men, who certainly cannot ride a race, but who have horse in every feature, puff cigars and chat in jerky monosyllables that to an outsider are perfectly incomprehensible. But the glib way in which heavy sums of money are spoken of conveys the impression that they dabble in enormous wealth. ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... which from this time enters into it. He developed signal ability as a lawyer during the years of his practice at Kongsvinger; became prosperous and influential, bought a considerable estate (called Sigridnaes) and began to dabble in politics. He still wrote occasional poems, and was the soul of all conviviality in the town. He entertained celebrities, wrote political leaders in the papers, earned a great deal of money, lived high, and unfolded a restless and widely ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... you can easily see why. For if I wanted to dabble in counterfeits, then I need not go digging for gold first. [Pause] It is a strange thing anyhow, that if anybody else did what I cannot make myself do, then I'd be willing to acquit him—but I couldn't possibly acquit myself. I might even make a brilliant speech in defence of the thief, ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... regularly on Sunday afternoons; but I advise you not to speculate amongst us, for if you do we shall beat you. We know our business better than you do, and you'll get nothing out of us any more than we should get out of you if we were to dabble in your law, for you know that business better than ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... patricians of Rome, he had on some small points to change both his pronunciation and his spelling of Latin. The reform of spelling was a favorite subject with Roman scholars, and even emperors were not too proud to dabble in inventing new letters and diacritical signs. The difficulty, however, never assumes serious proportions. The small minority of people who were able to read and write, pleased themselves as best they could; and, by timely ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... "I dabble very little in merchandise," returned the brigadier; "but, as a general principle, I should say that no article of Leaphigh manufacture would command so certain a ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... concluded it was too vast for him to decide, for he speedily dismissed it and turned his attention to that which more nearly concerned him. Still toiling with his hand, much in the same manner that a child would dabble in the water, he kept up the tardy movement of the canoe until he began to grow fearless again, and he ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... kicked off his shoes, removed his socks, and thrust both feet over the side to dabble them in the ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... make housework a joy. I sold Laura one—traded her one for lessons for Ruth, and she says wash-day at the Doctor's is like Sunday now—what say? Lila's so crazy about it they can't keep her out of the basement while the woman works,—likes to dabble in the water you know like all children, washing her doll clothes, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... what is a vital lie but a lie?" the White Logic challenges. "Come. Fill your glass and let us examine these vital liars who crowd your bookshelves. Let us dabble in ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... their evidence of love and confidence in their wives, these colonial gentlemen were not, however, especially anxious to have womankind dabble in politics or other public affairs. The husbands were willing enough to explain public activities of a grave nature to their help-meets, and sometimes even asked their opinion on proposed movements; but the men did not hesitate ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... said Jasper; "a fine, generous girl. I like her, even though she does dabble in literature; and I like Hinton too. When are they to ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... sight to behold them walk, poddling one after other, with their toes out, like soldiers drilling, and their little eyes cocked all ways at once, and the way that they dib with their bills, and dabble, and throw up their heads and enjoy something, and then tell the others about it. Therefore I knew at once, by the way they were carrying on, that there must be something or other gone wholly amiss in the duck-world. Sister ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore |
