"Hobby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to lose their actual substance, and become things of intellect. Nothing is too small or too trifling to undergo this change, and acquire dignity thereby. A child's shoe; the doll, seated in her little wicker carriage; the hobby-horse;—whatever, in a word, has been used or played with, during the day, is now invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present as by daylight. Thus, therefore, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... recollection of three well-employed weeks to sweeten it. Even this was denied him. Ever since he came on leave the weather had been abominable: high wind, incessant rain, all the elements conspiring to prevent the enjoyment of his hobby. Rodier had suggested that he should apply for an extension of leave, but Smith, though he did not lack courage, could not screw it to this pitch. He remembered too vividly his interview with the captain when coming ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... Potsdam Guard and its Colonel-King! And all succeeding Autumns the like, so long as Friedrich Wilhelm lived; every Autumn, out of Russia a hundred of the tallest mortals living. Invaluable,—to a "man of genius" mounted on his hobby! One's "stanza" can be polished at ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... explain the congeniality of humour with pathos, so exquisite in Sterne and Smollett, and hence also the tender feeling which we always have for, and associate with, the humours or hobby-horses of a man. First, we respect a humourist, because absence of interested motive is the ground-work of the character, although the imagination of an interest may exist in the individual himself, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Greeks who christened it knew that it was the god-energy in the human machine. Without its driving force nothing worth doing has ever been done. It is man's dearest possession. Love, friendship, religion, altruism, devotion to hobby or career—all these, and most of the other good things in life, are forms of enthusiasm. A medicine for the most diverse ills, it alleviates both the pains of poverty and the boredom of riches. Apart from it man's heart is seldom joyful. Therefore it should ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... poverty with contentment? To some extent doubtless it rests on Christian teaching, although perhaps not much on the Christian teaching of the present day. Present-day religion, indeed, must often seem to the cottagers a tiresome hobby reserved to the well-to-do; but from distant generations there seems to have come down, in many a cottage family, a rather lofty religious sentiment which fosters honesty, patience, resignation, courage. Much of the gravity, much of the tranquillity ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... observed of all observers," and realised fabulous prices. In a long range of booths, devoted to the products of manufacturing industry, some of the costliest productions of the looms of Europe were exhibited for sale. There were peep-shows, and swings, and merry-go-rounds, and hobby-horses, and, with so many inducements offered, it will not be supposed that ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... silently at the speaker. Generally on such occasions matters are made infinitely worse by some Job's comforter, who creeps about suggesting abstruse questions, and hinting that they represent some examiner's particular hobby. Such a one came to Dimsdale's elbow, and quenched the last ray of hope which lingered in the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... now that he had mounted his hobby, and that he would inflict on him, as he was in the habit of doing after dinner, a long-winded series of his magisterial exploits, reminded him that he had expressed a wish to see him on very ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... his surprise, the Fairy turned crimson with rage. It was a hobby of hers to be like nobody, because she was a fairy and able to change her appearance, from one moment to the next, as she pleased. That evening, she happened to be ugly and old and hump-backed; she had lost one of her eyes; and two lean ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... party, which it was his work to organize and lead. Foreseeing how dangerous the triumph of a vulgar and ignorant mob would be, he tried to provide for educating the people, on the same principle that we would to-day educate the colored race. The great hobby of his life was education. He thus spent the best part of his latter years in founding and directing the University of Virginia, including a plan for popular education as well. To all schemes of education he lent a willing ear; but ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... visitor could have the first for L1,000. "I'll take it," said the prince of penmakers, "and you must make me three or four more at your own price." If other artists did as well with Mr. Gillott they could have had but little cause of complaint. Another hobby of Mr. Gillott's was collecting fiddles, his specimens, of which he once said he had a "boat load," realising L4,000; while his cabinet of precious stones was of immense value. The millionaire died Jan. 5, 1872, leaving ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... said with compunction, "you'll think me an awful bore, Jerrolds, but I've been more or less practising on you, haven't I? But you'll remember, perhaps, this used to be a sort of hobby of mine, and I work it into shape nowadays for a young men's ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... is that a layman will never take an author quite seriously. He regards authorship, not as a profession, but as something between au inspiration and a hobby. In as far as it is an inspiration, it is a gift from Heaven, and ought, therefore, to be shared with the rest of the world; in as far as it is a hobby, it is something which should be done not too expertly, but in a casual, amateur, haphazard fashion. ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... rarities and curiosities is so narrow, that the fresh aspirant is soon the central object of attention to the few who can provide him with what he imagines he wants. As a rule, where a man has no personal knowledge, and finds that he is gradually becoming a milch-cow for the trade, the hobby is not of long duration; it is only where the buyer can control and check the vendor that satisfactory relations are likely to continue, perhaps for years, perhaps for a lifetime. There is ever a tendency, on the part of the bookish ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... purport of his wanderings through the streets of the city,—gaining new experience with every hour, and studying the needs and complaints of his people for himself;—but if we should be told of a modern monarch doing likewise in our own day, we should mount on the stiff hobby-horse of our ridiculous conventionality, and accuse him of having brought the dignity of the Throne into contempt. Yet nothing perhaps can be more contemptible than a monarch who is too surrounded by flunkeyism to be a Man,—and, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Peter Grimm. "It's I who have been doing the 'wondering'; through that Scotch brain of yours. I'm making use of that Spiritualistic hobby of yours because you're too dense to hear me except through some rarer ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... that, at last, he had reached the milk in the cocoanut. Captain Dan, with his love for home and his hatred of lodges and societies, had refused to be interested in his wife's pet hobby, and felt himself neglected and forsaken. He had brooded upon it, and this outburst and the letter he ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... These expressions of grave doubt as to the expediency of "female suffrage," together with the fact that the editor of the Tribune, in his report as chairman of the Suffrage Committee in the New York Constitutional Convention, declared this new hobby "an innovation revolutionary and sweeping, openly at war with a distribution of duties and functions between the sexes as venerable and pervading as government itself," make the Tribune's recommendation that we shall "try the experiment ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in an undertone, clutching the Count's arm and nodding to a tall man. "How pale and grave he is poor man! His hobby has not trotted to his ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... and with diuers other gentlemen, his L. followers of good account: his colours being aduanced by that valiant resolute gentleman, (a man beautified with many excellent rare gifts, of good learning and vnderstanding) S. Edward Hobby Knight. And thus he likewise marching with al possible speede on foote, notwithstanding his L. many yeres, the Intolerable heate, for the time, and the ouertiring tedious deepe sands, with other many impediments: Yet in good time, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... the process of transplanting bodily a tribe of wild bees, is given in the notes to The Tay, a descriptive poem of considerable merit by David Millar. (Perth, Richardson, 1830.) 'When the boy, whose hobby leads him in that direction, has found out a "byke," he marks the spot well, and returns in the evening, when all its inmates are housed for the night. Pushing a twig into the hole as far as it will go, in case he should ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... Howe, Sir——.' He cordially welcomed literary talent of all kinds, giving every man full swing on his own hobby, and changing rapidly from grave to gay, from lively to severe. He cultivated from the first the journalistic spirit of giving fair play in his columns to both sides, even when one of the sides was the editor or the proprietor. After he entered the House of Assembly, ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... his hobby, exalting his own city at the expense of every other place. I have my doubts if he had been in either of the cities he had been talking about. I was just going to say something to sober him down, if I could, when the young ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... profane jest-book would not, in his view, more foully desecrate the church seat of a Christian than a book of prayer printed with red letters and ornamented with a cross on the back. Most active clergymen have their hobby, and Sunday observances are his. Sunday, however, is a word which never pollutes his mouth—it is always "the Sabbath." The "desecration of the Sabbath," as he delights to call it, is to him meat and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the time came to leave. "You must come up often, Miss Moore," said Mrs. Kirby kindly. "Look upon Beechwood as a second home while you are in Kinglake. We have no daughter of our own, so we make a hobby of cultivating other people's." ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... brings women and children, hobby-horses and canary birds back to their homes in Johannesburg. Betty has returned, accompanied by Mr. Seymour Port, from Pretoria. She gives a very spirited account of her visit. Through Mr. Sauer, one of the advocates retained by the Reformers, a visiting permit was obtained. She and Mr. ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... in Europe, Iceland is the one which has been the most minutely mapped, not even excepting the ordnance survey of Ireland. The Danish Government seem to have had a hobby about it, and the result has been a chart so beautifully executed, that every little crevice, each mountain torrent, each flood of lava, is laid down with an accuracy perfectly astonishing. One huge blank, however, in the south-west corner ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... simple savages—thro' sheer pretence— Is reckon'd quite a saint amongst the vermin. But where's the reverence, or where the nous, To ride on one's religion thro' the lobby, Whether a stalking-horse or hobby, To show its pious ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... doesn't FEEL a fool? You will come and play at the vicarage, I hope. Indeed, I want you to go and come just as you like. We are relations, you know, in a sort of way—at least connections. I don't know if you go in for genealogy—it's rather a hobby of mine; it fills up little bits of time, you know. I could reel you off quite a list of names, but Mrs. Graves doesn't care ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... believe in self-expression And disdain to be a law-abiding man, You must cultivate a hobby of insulting ev'ry bobby Whenever you conveniently can. You'll find him quite impervious to jesting, But he has another less attractive side, Elemental, unalluring and arresting When his patience ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... sympathize, but nevertheless I should see that the strait-jacket was brought into requisition. When your generosity train dashes recklessly beyond regulation schedules of safety, I must discharge engineer sympathy, and whistle down the brakes. What new hobby do you intend that I ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... teasings of her brother that gave me my first inkling that the old ranchero was a wily matchmaker, though he religiously denied every such accusation. With a remarkable complacency, Jean Lovelace met and parried her tormentor, but her brother never tired of his hobby while there was a ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... right, and I hope that minister of yours will deliver that lecture in many places throughout this country, for there are not many people, even in England, who believe in the reality of the German menace. But this is my hobby, my sister says, and I don't want to ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... in Lynn and bred in Boston; a long-pedigreed New Englander, whose ancestors had smelted iron ore in Lynn when Charles the First was King. He was a lawyer by profession and a university professor by temperament. His specialty, as a man of affairs, had been marine law; and his hobby was the collection of rare books and old English engravings. He was a master of the Greek language, and very fond of using it. On all possible occasions he used the language of Pericles in his conversation; and even carried this preference so far as to write his business memoranda ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... kept me filled in on the latest UFO scuttlebutt being passed around the Washington press circles. He was one of those humans who had a brain like a filing cabinet; he could remember everything about everything. UFO's were a hobby of his. He remembered when the Grudge Report came out; in fact, he'd managed to get a copy of his own. He said the report had been quite impressive, but only in its ambiguousness, illogical reasoning, and ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... have a hobby of my own, and do some steady stiff reading, only, as you are going to be a woman, and not a student, I would choose reading that linked me to as many as possible of other people's interests. How dull and shy poor ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... does not stand still— its Editor is always abreast of girlish interests. Whether it is a new career for girls, a new game, a new stitch in needlework, or a new hobby or fad, THE GIRL'S REALM is sure to be the first magazine to deal ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... the latest hobby, then? Your letters have amused us immensely, for each one had a new theory or experiment, and the latest was always the best. I thought Uncle would have died of laughter over the vegetarian mania it was so funny to imagine you living on bread and milk, baked apples, and ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Governments those serving terms of imprisonment for offences committed before the 4th of August, 1917, were released, a great number of the gaol-birds being sent to Stroehen. Residing in prison was a captain who made a hobby of being court-martialled. Under this new ruling he was taken out of cells for a few days, only to be put back to await trial for the trumped-up charge of having poison tablets on his person when recaptured after his last escape. ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... and then came "a Grand Tournament," in which a contest between "the Blue Knight" (Mr. Lechmere Whitmore), and "the Yellow Knight" (Mr. Baylis), each mounted upon hobby-horses, was most fiercely executed. Nor was the Giant Cormoran (fourteen feet in height), nor the Queen of Beauty, nor the Dragon Queen wanted to complete the chivalry of this burlesque upon ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... mistress-ship of a small school situated close to the gate of Burnham Park, and almost opposite Nugent's cottage. This was the sphere of labour for which Elsie was destined. The school was a neat, well-cared-for place—the special hobby of Lady Eleanor, who seldom let a day pass when at home without visiting it. Here Elsie Damer at once commenced her labours. The children were bright and clean, and had evidently been carefully taught by her predecessor. Miss Damer was also a welcome acquisition to ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... Languard. In hotels, Cauterets is hardly outgeneraled even by St. Moritz, though in expensiveness they will yield gracefully to the Engadine. The Hotel Continental, we find, has rather a pathetic story. It was built by a widow who had been left rich,—built only a few years ago, as a hobby, it would seem, and with little care for cost or judicious investment. It represented nearly three hundred thousand dollars, was extravagantly run, and lost money from the beginning. She also built a great cafe and music-hall across the street from the hotel, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... that of the Villa Camellia, and contained choicer and rarer flowers. There were glorious tanks of water-lilies, and there were pergolas of sweet-scented creepers, and the statues and arbors utterly eclipsed even those of a public park. It was evidently the Count's favorite hobby, and he had spared no expense in laying out the grounds. Rather fearful of being caught by some chance gardener the girls walked on, holding themselves in readiness to dive away if necessary and ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... some old deeds and documents written "Bagvil" or "Baggevil," was neither more nor less than a corruption of Bacchi Villa. Axcester and its neighbourhood are rich in Roman remains—the town stands, indeed, on the old Fosse Way—and, tempted by early success, Narcissus rode his hobby further and further afield. Now, at the age of forty-two, he could claim to be an authority on the Roman occupation of Britain, and especially on the conquests of Vespasian. The circle of—the Westcotes' acquaintance gathered in the fine hall of Bayfield—or, as Narcissus preferred ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... good-humoredly, 'are not a moderate man. You and Garrison are of the same stripe, both extremists. You have mounted one hobby, he another; that is all ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... capable but in some respects a singular man, performed his managerial duties without an office staff, wrote all his own letters, and not only wrote them but first carefully drafted them out in a hand minute almost as Jonathan Swift's. A strenuous worker, Mr. Johnstone, like most men who have no hobby, did not long survive his retirement ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... wheels, you cannot match Fortune. After all, she has made trochilics her hobby through all the ages. Look at her handiwork here. Jill knows Jack for a flunkey and seeks to dissemble her knowledge, for fear of bruising his heart. As for Jack, when Jill stumbles upon his secret, he curses his luck: now that he believes it ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... anywhere away from the great tourist tracks, was a favoured hobby with Lady Barbara, and Lester joined her as often as possible. Eastertide usually found her at Knobaltheim, an upland township in one of those small princedoms that make inconspicuous freckles on the ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... hobby," suggested Ainsworth; "that's the only way to choke Bently off. Where's Fenton? I never knew him quiet for so ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... That same day Crowe, by the advice of Sir Launcelot and his nephew, entered into conditional articles with the cynic, to allow him the interest of fifteen hundred pounds for life, provided by this means the captain should obtain possession of the estate of Hobby Hole in Yorkshire, which had belonged to his grandfather, and of which he was heir ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... to have made a hobby of the literature that arouses violent emotion and mental excitement, or lacerates the nerves, or shocks and startles. The lifelike and the natural are not powerful enough for his taste, though some of his Romantic Tales(1808), such as My Uncle's ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Polk, whose feet, large and booted, were planted against the wall. Mr. Washington, who was a most correct gentleman, with the illustrious forbears his name suggested, had never lifted his feet to one of his own mantels in his life; but Don Roberto's guests always humoured this little hobby, among many others. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... in your youth, sir," cried John, who had rather a mischievous propensity to start the old man on his hobby. ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... want to join our NNGA. This is a free country and people can just sit in the sun on the bare ground if they want to. They may not want trees and can eat grape nuts if they want. We know they need the hobby—the shade—the beauty—the protection or even nuts which nut trees will ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... why you pass up the toys That Santa considered just right for small boys; I can't understand why you turn up your nose At dogs, hobby-horses, and treasures like those, And play a whole hour, sometimes longer than that, With a thing as prosaic as daddy's ...
— Bib Ballads • Ring W. Lardner
... he left Smithers he buttonholed another acquaintance, a young man who thought he knew Wall Street, and therefore had a hobby—manipulation. No one could induce him to buy stocks by telling him how well the companies were doing, how bright the prospects, etc. That was bait for "suckers," not for clever young stock operators. But any one, even a stranger, who said that "they"—the perennially mysterious ...
— The Tipster - 1901, From "Wall Street Stories" • Edwin Lefevre
... equal sensibility who knows and cares nothing about Romans and Byzantines, so long as I recognise that art criticism and archaeology are two different things, I hope I may be allowed to dabble unrebuked in my favourite hobby: ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... Vaughan, which bade the Lord of Granthuse welcome. Then the King had him and all his company into the little Park, where he made him have great sport; and there the King made him ride on his own horse, on a right fair hobby, the which the King gave him." The King's dinner was "ordained" in the Lodge, Windsor Park. After dinner they hunted again, and the King showed his guest his garden and vineyard of pleasure. Then "the Queen did ordain a great banquet ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... I called to see E. H——, having previously appointed a meeting for the purpose of inquiring about our name. He is an old bachelor, and truly forlorn. The pride of ancestry seems to be his great hobby. He had a good many papers in his desk at the Custom-House, which he produced and dissertated upon, and afterwards went with me to his sister's, and showed me an old book, with a record of the children of the first emigrant, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... I am stark crazy, but there's none of you too sane; It's just a little matter of degree. My hobby is to hunt out gold; it's fortressed in my brain; It's life and love and wife and home to me. And I'll strike it, yes, I'll strike it; I've a hunch I cannot fail; I've a vision, I've a prompting, I've a call; I hear the hoarse stampeding of an ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... mind, as well as in the exercise of the body, diversion is a secondary consideration, and designed only to make that agreeable which is at the same time useful, to such noble purposes as health and wisdom. But what should we say to a man who mounted his chamber-hobby, or fought with his own shadow, for his amusement only? how much more absurd and weak would he appear who swallowed ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... my one absorbing hobby although it boasted no pretensions. I contrived attractive show cases, some from egg-boxes, emblazoning the exterior with striking show cards and signs which I executed in the confines of my horse-box in the barracks after my comrades ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... possible. Many statesmen have been infected by this Dreadnaught fever. Their policy seems to be based on the idea that the safety of a nation depends on the number of its battleships. Even peaceful and moderate men are carried away by this hobby, and support it. It is forgotten that great changes have taken place during the last twenty or thirty years; that a nation can now be attacked by means quite beyond the reach of Dreadnaughts. The enormous sums spent on these frightful monsters, if applied to more worthy ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... Edith made rather a hobby of decoration, and she had a cultured and quiet taste, and much knowledge on the subject. She guessed Madame Frabelle thought her rooms too plain, too colourless. Instead of the dull greys and blues, and surfaces without design, she felt sure her friend ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... strangely sore and jealous as he listened. Who was this man? Some young aristocrat, no doubt, born silver spoon in mouth—one of your idle, insolent rich, with nothing to do but make a hobby of art, and patronise artists. He ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "If your old dad could ride like that he'd never have taken up railway building. Funny nag, that of his. Looks like a hobby horse come to life. What's he trying to tell us? Regrets he can't come? Or is it a challenge to bring my bow and arrow and settle the old feud? Anyway, it's a rattling good stunt—and I'd like ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... me ter do—hangin' ain't never bin no hobby o' mine. As I understand it, this Gaskins wus one o' these yere militia men. I reckon thet if these yere two bug's wus ter swear thet I killed him—as most likely they will—them boys wud string me up furst, ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... good times as well as the others, but her smile came less quickly. And there were days, like the present, when her face would wrinkle with a frown as she tried to work out some problem in photography. Picture-taking was her hobby, and when the other girls skipped and danced about, Shirley would often trudge along burdened ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... found a Star as the sign to lead their journeying. Night after night the constellations rise undimmed in the clear sky and fairly urge the beholder to close acquaintance. A knowledge of them fills the sky with friendly forms and gives the student a new and lasting "hobby" that may be pursued anywhere, and kept through life. The Star Club has popularized its celestial interests by presenting to the College a pageant in three scenes, a "Dream of the Sun and Planets," in which the Earth Dweller is transported ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... auditors, however warming to himself; and I am inclined to think that these native teachers, having acquired facility of speaking and an endless supply of religious platitudes to talk about, ride their hobby rather hard, without much consideration for their flock. The Missionaries, however, have much to be proud of in this country. They have assisted the Government in changing a savage into a civilized community in a wonderfully short space of time. Forty years ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... turf on the breast of the heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment. There is more of the fire of native genius in it than in half-a-dozen of modern English Bacchanalians! Now I am on my hobby-horse, I cannot help inserting two other old stanzas, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... with my father, who at first seemed to listen to me as if I had been talking of an excursion to the moon. But I threw in a dexterous dose of the old Greek Cleruchioe cited by Trevanion, which set him off full trot on his hobby, till after a short excursion to Euboea and the Chersonese, he was fairly lost amidst the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor. I then gradually and artfully decoyed him into his favorite science of Ethnology; and while he was speculating on the origin of the American savages, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in his beloved Roman Camp; and this diversion enabled me to escape from Marius—I fear with a somewhat unseemly precipitation—by pressing him for information in regard to the matter which the children had in hand. As to openly checking the Vidame, when once he fairly is astride of his hobby, the case is hopeless. To cast a doubt upon even the least of his declarations touching the doings of the Roman General is the signal for a blaze of arguments down all his battle front; and I really do not like even to speculate upon what might happen were I ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... to Stevenson this morning, Hobart caught a glimpse of a colored man coming toward us. It suggested to him a hobby which he rides now every day, and he commenced his oration by saying, in his declamatory way: "The negro is the coming man." "Yes," I interrupted, "so I see, and he appears to have his hat full of peaches;" and ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... I wished for a son, to continue the family; but my wife often tells me, that boys are dirty things, and are always troublesome in a house; and declares that she has hated the sight of them ever since she saw lady Fondle's eldest son ride over a carpet with his hobby-horse all mire. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... styling him "Your Excellency," and intimating that he must be perfect master of all great subjects. In truth, they soon discovered from the disjointed character of his discourse upon various subjects that his wits were deranged; for no matter what subject they introduced, he would mount his favorite hobby of taking care of the nation. But how a man could be an adept in politics and a simpleton in so many other things they could not clearly understand. They therefore came naturally enough to the conclusion that the government had set a trap to get rid of a gentleman with designs ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... letter on Father Damien shows that. But there was nothing of the professional reformer about him. He had no hobby, and he was the artist first and then the philanthropist. This is right; it was the law of his being. Other men are better equipped to do the work of humanity's city missionaries than was he. Let their more rugged health and less sensitive nerves ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... amateur, Professor. But it is a good thing for an old man to have a hobby, a very perplexing hobby. Modern science makes so many strides every year, every day, that it is practically impossible for an amateur to keep apace." He preceded them to a spacious shed in the rear of the house. It was carefully and immaculately ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... scrambling through the day's classes with as little exertion as possible. She shivered in her corner, poor mite, sucking audibly, to the distraction of her elders, the while she skimmed over her lessons, and looked forward to the time when she would be free to devote herself to the hobby of the hour. ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... him a friend by accident—the accident of a club, where, finding themselves sitting down to dine at the same moment, they had taken the same table. Primarily, it was an opportunity to adjust some loose ends of Chip's domestic affairs; incidentally, they stumbled on a common hobby in Victorian English politics. There was no subject on which Emery Bland was better informed, with a learning that covered the whole long stretch from Lord Melbourne to Lord Salisbury, and which he could garnish ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... him: what he once had has perished long ago in the dreary toil of money-grubbing. The men who build or decorate his house have a certain pleasure in their work; all that he does is to pay them for being happy. If he should adopt the rich man's hobby of collecting pictures or a library, he rarely enjoys a higher pleasure than the mere lust of possession. He buys what he is told to buy, without discrimination; he has no knowledge of what constitutes rarity or value; and most certainly he knows nothing ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... taught them better! They seem to imagine that they should continually be improving themselves, in either body or mind. If they take up a sport, it is because the sport may improve their health. And if the hobby is intellectual it must needs be employed to improve their brain. The fact is that their conception of self-improvement is too narrow. In their restricted sense of the phrase, they possibly don't need improving; they possibly are already ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... inscription recorded his name, as did the learned Dame Elizabeth Hobby on a brass at ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... spent so pleasant an evening for many years. You have let me ride my hobby to my heart's content. It is ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... her over for dinner—she became almost impotent from agitation, only excusable if it had been some great public disaster. She and Mr. Harry Higgins—an exceptionally clever and devoted friend of mine—having revived the opera, Bohemian society became her hobby; but a tenor in the country or a dancer on the lawn are not really wanted; and, although she spent endless time at Covent Garden and achieved considerable success, restlessness devoured her. While receiving the adoration of a small but influential circle, she appeared ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... all. She knew that argument or persuasion was lost on her sister once she was started on her hobby-horse, ill-temper. She could only hope that she would forget about it by degrees. And after a while it almost seemed so. They went down to the shore, where it was so bright and pleasant that it did not seem possible for the crossest person in the world to resist the soft yet fresh breeze, ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... to which he had come fresh from the China station; and he was curious to see Harry Feversham. He did not admit that it was more than the natural curiosity of a man who, disabled in comparative youth, had made a hobby out of the study of human nature. He was interested to see whether the lad took after his mother or his ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... downe the walls and Gates of Rome To make an entrance for an Hobby-horse; To vaunt to th'people his ridiculous spoyles; To come with Lawrell and with Olyves crown'd For having been the worst of all the ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... descended from the gig he found himself close to old Mr. Harkaway, the master of the hounds. Mr. Harkaway was a gentleman who had been master of these hounds for more than forty years, and had given as much satisfaction as the county could produce. His hounds, which were his hobby, were perfect. His horses were good enough for the Hertfordshire lanes and Hertfordshire hedges. His object was not so much to run a fox as to kill him in obedience to certain rules of the game. Ever so many hinderances have been created to bar the killing ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... the gold; it was too heavy for him to pack, especially as he had no way to carry water. Then taking a small bag of gold dust in his pocket he started across the desert. He had a hobby for taking photographs and carried a small camera with him, and before leaving he photographed the place, which he called "The Mound of Eternal Silence," so that in case anything happened to him it could be found without trouble. They developed the negatives later, and ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... has been quite talkative and rides his hobby to death,[155] concerning the rights of the negro to have land for nothing, etc., etc., expatiating upon the tyranny of the newly forming landed aristocracy, the gigantic speculators who are grinding the negro ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... Gardening is a hobby which does not exist under very favorable conditions at the front, its greatest drawback being that when the gardener's unit is moved from one place to another his garden cannot accompany him. Its devotees appear to derive ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... black coat green with age and a "Cup Final" cap. At the same time (this too on The Times' authority) there is an oddly and obsolescently attired lady going about who also makes London hospitals her hobby. She begins by asking the secretary if she may take off her boots, and, receiving permission, takes them off, places her feet on an adjacent chair and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... wretched, scorn'd a Thing. How little cause has mankind to be proud Of Noble Birth, the Idol of the Crowd! Have I abroad in Battels Honour won To be at home dishonourably undone? Mark'd with a Star and Garter, and made fine With all those gaudy Trifles once call'd mine, Your Hobby-Horses [1] and your Joys of State, And now become the Object of your Hate; But, d———'ee, Sir, I'll be Legitimate. I was your Darling, but against your Will, And know that I will be the Peoples still; And when you're ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... we work and fight and grow together, each may learn something from the other. I'm free to confess that your religion looks a bit cold and hard to me, even here in the good city where each man may ride his own hobby to death, and hoot at his neighbors as much as he will. You seem to keep your piety shut up all the week in your bare, white churches, and only let it out on Sundays, just a trifle musty with disuse. You set your rich, warm and soft to ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... is not known; it is a dance of young men in their shirts, with bells at their feet, and ribbons of various colours tied round their arms, and slung across their shoulders. Some writers, Shakespeare in particular, mention a Hobby-horse and a Maid Marian, as necessary in this recreation. Sir William Temple speaks of a pamphlet in the library of the Earl of Leicester, which gave an account of a set of morrice-dancers in King James's ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... going to take at least a year of post-graduate courses in the College of Agriculture. You see, I'm developing a hobby—farming. I want to do something ... something constructive. My father wasn't constructive to amount to anything. Neither were you fellows. You struck a new land in pioneer days, and you picked up money like a lot of sailors shaking out nuggets from ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... long walks, Byron had enough to do to keep himself thin, Tennyson had his pipe, Morris made tapestry at a loom. Southey had no amusements, and he died of softening of the brain. The happy people are those who have work which they love, and a hobby of a totally different kind which they love even better. But I doubt whether one can make a hobby for oneself in middle age, unless one is a very ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in buying books. His hazel-coloured coat was known to all the stall keepers on the quay from the Pont de la Concorde to the Pont Saint Michel. What he did with these books, so numerous that no man's lifetime would have been long enough to read them, nobody knew, least of all, himself. But this hobby of his amounted to monomania: when he came home at night without bringing a musty quarto with him, he would repeat the saying of Titus, "I have lost a day." His enticing manners, his language, which was a mosaic of every possible style, and ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... His childhood was neither healthful nor buoyant.... Chemical experiment was his favorite hobby, involving a lonely, confined, unwholesome sort of life, baneful to body and mind.... The age of fifteen or sixteen produced a revolution; retorts and crucibles were forever discarded.... He became enamoured ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... such an instance in my own freshman days. I fell into the hands of such an instructor in Greek. We were reading that most charming of Greek stories—The Odyssey. Textual criticism was this man's hobby, and we were put to work trying to compare texts, to delve into the intricacies of form and structure—trying to improve upon Homer! Such information as we could not find he gave us, in the formal lecture, ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... to point out this and that miniature of his collection, bending over Thresk as he did so. It seemed that the two collectors were quite lost in their common hobby until Robert ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... archaeological, and this taste he shared with Fabrice, who had cultivated the hobby at Naples. It so happened that the two were engaged in excavations near the bridge over the Po where the main road passes into Austrian territory at Castel-Maggiore. Early one morning Fabrice, after surveying the work that was going on in the trenches, strolled away with a gun, intent upon lark-shooting. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... especially useful when the taste for reading becomes a taste for knowledge, and when it is accompanied by some specialisation and concentration and by some exercise of the powers of observation. 'Many tastes and one hobby' is no bad ideal to be aimed at. The boy who learns to collect and classify fossils, or flowers, or insects, who has acquired a love for chemical experiments, who has begun to form a taste for some particular ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Learning of adequate rest to refresh his illustrious mind. And all that he said the Professor parried with bows, and drew enchantments from his cupboard of wonder to replenish the bowl on the table. And Rodriguez saw that he was in the clutch of a collector, one who having devoted all his days to a hobby will exhibit his treasures to the uttermost, and that the stars that magic knows were no less to the Professor than all the whatnots that a man collects and insists on showing to whomsoever enters his house. He feared some terrible journey, perhaps ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... especial genius of the artist, and a work that is not aglow with its creator's personality—personality, mind you, not coarse realism—can never rank as a masterpiece. But, come, this won't do. Why did you want to get me astride my hobby?" ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy |
