"Dabbler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mistress mine," said he, "and thank not this voiceless dabbler in ink for the mercy, that travelling not a week before I reached London, I chanced into the company of a stranger, who fell captive to my wit, and displayed so lively a tooth for the sweets of Parnassus—to wit, my poesy—that, hearing I was about to issue ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... throat lay an antique necklace of aqua marines. Heavens! How perfect she was! As she moved over in her grand free stride and took my hands in both of hers, vitality and glowing strength seemed to pour along her veins into mine; she seemed almost extravagantly alive, and I a pallid, stupid dabbler on the shore of things. Her figure was much fuller; her arm, where the loose lace sleeve fell back from it, was plump and round, and this and the increased softness of her throat and chin added a year or two—yes, three or four—to what I had hitherto ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... such conduct where such grave matters are concerned.... The code is absolute on that subject.... Their challenge once made, to which you, Monsieur Chapron, have to reply by yes or no, these gentlemen should withdraw immediately.... It is not your fault, it is Ardea's, who has allowed that dabbler in spurious dividends to perform his part of intriguer.... But we will rectify all in the right way, which is the French.... And ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mysteries. He loves the marvellous, not in the vulgar sense of the word, but as a symbol of perplexity which encounters every thoughtful man in his journey through life. Similar tenants at an earlier period might, with almost equal probability, have led him to the stake as a dabbler in forbidden sciences, or have caused him to be revered as one to whom a deep spiritual ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... thus we said. Lord Delacour had his partisans, it is true; amongst whom the loudest was odious Mrs. Luttridge. I embraced the first opportunity I met with of retaliation. You must know that Mrs. Luttridge, besides being a great faro-player, was a great dabbler in politics; for she was almost as fond of power as of money: she talked loud and fluently, and had, somehow or other, partly by intriguing, partly by relationship, connected herself with some of the leading men in parliament. There was to be a contested election ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... of Orleans nobly condemns slavery. The Bishop's pastoral is an answer to H. E., Archbishop of New York. The French bishop therein is true to the spirit of the Catholic church. The Irish archbishop, compared to him, appears a dabbler in Romanism. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... v. "Asmai"): I am reproached by a dabbler in Orientalism for using this admirable writer who shows more knowledge in one page than my critic does ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... great respect, but his interest was ever in the present and the future. He was forever fulminating against bad writing, and hated the ignorant and slipshod work of the hack almost as much as he despised the sham of the man who affected letters, the dabbler and the poetaster. His taste was for the roast beef of literature, not for the side dishes and the trimmings, and his appreciation of the substantial work of others was no surer than his instinct for his ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... The dabbler in science and invention often fancies himself a discoverer, asserts his claims, and receives recognition from those who are still more ignorant of the subject than himself. Under this head come the performances of Mr. Bishop and other sciolists who are exercising ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... awakenment under the influence of the recurrence of the Eastern Han Day half-cycle. What kind of reality Chang Taoling represents, one cannot say: whether a true teacher in his degree, sent by the Lodge, around whom legends have gathered; or a mere dabbler in alchemy and magic. Here is the story told of him; you will note an incident or two in it that suggest ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... but school-books; another has five novels already under examination;... another gentleman is just giving up business, on purpose, I verily believe, to avoid publishing my book. In short, of all the seventeen booksellers, only one has vouchsafed even to read my tales; and he—a literary dabbler himself, I should judge—has the impertinence to criticise them, proposing what he calls vast improvements, and concluding, after a general sentence of condemnation, with the definitive assurance that he will ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... the cross-examination which revealed Jasper as a scientist with something approaching amazement. She had known of the laboratory, but had associated the place with those entertaining experiments that an idle dabbler in chemistry might undertake. ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... and his own petty achievements in endless hexameters, beat Demosthenes off the field with his speeches, and Plato with his philosophic dialogues; and time alone was wanting for him to vanquish also Thucydides. He was in fact so thoroughly a dabbler, that it was pretty much a matter of indifference to what work he applied his hand. By nature a journalist in the worst sense of that term—abounding, as he himself says, in words, poor beyond all conception in ideas—there was no department in which he could ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... on the pretty red and white of the boyish dabbler in Art—for Lyle had lately taken a fancy that way too—and then at the countenance he maligned. She did not say a word; but Lyle hovering round, found his interference somewhat sharply put aside during ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... they in the Roman Forum Snarling, quarrelled with each other; How Sir Gaius stuck to his point, And to his Sir Ulpianus; How then later comers dabbled. Till the Emperor Justinianus, He of all the greatest dabbler, Sent them home about their business. And I often asked the question: 'Must it really be our fate then These dry bones to gnaw forever, Which were flung to us as remnants From their banquets by the Romans? Why should not, from ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... his friends, Morton Serviss was a most welcome guest. His frank, boyish ways, his careless dress, his freedom from cant, his essential good-fellowship deceived the most of his acquaintances into thinking him a mere dabbler in science, a man of wealth amusing himself; but Weissmann, who was qualified to know, said: "He has persistency, concentration, a keen mind, a clear ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... to bleed, he said, it was because he had omitted to have himself blooded four days after a quarter of a year's interval. Dr. Johnson, who was a great dabbler in physick[430], disapproved much of periodical bleeding[431]. 'For (said he) you accustom yourself to an evacuation which Nature cannot perform of herself, and therefore she cannot help you, should you, from forgetfulness or any other ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... aspirants for the Prix de Rome protest each year against such subjects being set them for their concours, but their judges, recalling how effective such examples are, are insistent. The best examples of the School of Fontainebleau are a distinct variety of French painting. The veriest dabbler in art can say with Michelet: "There is no reminiscence of anything ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... eyes and hair, and even the peculiarities of his shape, in the delicate smallness of the hands, and the Arab-like turn of the stately head, appeared to fix him as belonging to one at least of the Oriental races. And a dabbler in the Eastern tongues even sought to reduce the simple name of Zanoni, which a century before had been borne by an inoffensive naturalist of Bologna (The author of two works on botany and rare plants.), ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton |
