"Hobby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... (1) At the at-home aforesaid. (2) At Macmurdo's house in Fitzroy Street in the days of the Century Guild and its paper 'The Hobby Horse.' (3) At a meeting somewhere in Westminster at which I delivered an address on Socialism, and at which Oscar turned up and spoke. Robert Ross surprised me greatly by telling me, long after Oscar's death, that it was this address of mine that moved Oscar ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... the nursery for a last look. The crib is gone, and the doll babies and the blockhouses, but the echoes have not yet stopped galloping; May's laugh, and Edith's glee, and Frank's shout, as he urged the hobby-horse to its utmost speed, both heels struck into the flanks, till out of his glass eye the horse seemed ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... rank—the son of a gentleman who bore arms, and his father's father before him. He dined at twelve, he supped at six, he said his prayers, and blessed himself when no strangers were by. He was something of a herbalist, as a sheer hobby of his own; he went to feed his falcons in the morning, he rode with them after dinner (from last August he had found himself riding north more often than south, since Marjorie lived in that quarter); and now all had ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... witness many of these little eccentricities, from being apprised of the peculiar hobby of mine host; yet, I confess, the parade with which so odd a dish was introduced somewhat perplexed me, until I gathered from the conversation of the Squire and the parson that it was meant to represent the bringing in of the boar's ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... cried the General. 'Egad! Won't they?' The old Christian Quixote mounted his hobby, and rode. 'There are things in war that nobody wants to think about. It's an ugly trade. When I was a youngster, and in my first action I was very hard-pressed, and I caught a bayonet out of the hand of a fellow who was dropping at my side, and I had to use it. It's fifty years ago now, but the ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... the country squire. Finding himself without means on the death of his father, he went, like other ruined provincials, to Paris. On the breaking out of the Revolution he took part in public affairs. In spite of revolutionary principles, which made a hobby of republican honesty, the management of public business in those days was by no means clean. A political spy, a stock-jobber, a contractor, a man who confiscated in collusion with the syndic of a commune the property ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... it, I hated the army; that sounds like high treason, doesn't it? However, I got used to things and made art my hobby instead of my vocation. You won't mind if I confess that a view of this kind makes me long ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... He cares little about the welfare of his country; his amusement seems to consist in concocting and executing bloody designs, and his mind must be so accustomed to this species of excitement that it can scarce do without it. It is unfortunate that the Rajah's hobby should lie in this peculiar direction, more unfortunate still that the contemplated victim should be Jung; for I presume that there is little doubt that the King's brother, who was engaged in the last conspiracy against the minister's life—which took ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... poor, excepting two or three of the Rajah's own, which were handsomely equipped; these had their tails raised on end, exactly like hobby-horses. In addition to this, each was supplied with supernumerary yak tails, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... hours hang heavily on you,' I remark, 'or, maybe, you have a hobby like the political prisoners one reads of. You have a favorite flower somewhere? Or, perhaps, you are partial ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... man ought to have a shouk (a hobby) of sorts, and he took the trouble to ride a day out of his way to show me a belt of black soil that was ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... no," said Labertouche readily. "Now and again, of course, I run across a bit of valuable information; and then, somehow, indirectly, the police get wind of it. But this going fantee in an amateur way is simply my hobby; I've been at it for years—and very successfully, too. Of course, it'll have its end. One's bound to slip up eventually. You can train yourself to live the life of the native, but you can't train your mind to think as he thinks. That's how the missteps ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... editor and principal owner of the Vancouver Telegram and Evening News. He has been a father to me, and is greatly interested in my welfare. He has a hobby which I call 'a wild-goose scheme,' and he thinks that I am the only one who can carry it out. He is not the ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... Lord Shaftesbury on that of an author in his time, of which he wrote, "It is free from that affected obscurity and laboured pomp of language aiming at a false sublime, with crowded simile and mixed metaphor (the hobby-horse ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... 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
... with her, and each in a somewhat dangerous way: the actor with all the appetite of a savage and a spoilt child; the soldier with all the simple selfishness of a man of will rather than mind; Sir Wilson with that daily hardening concentration with which old Hedonists take to a hobby; nay, even the abject Parkinson, who had known her before her triumphs, and who followed her about the room with eyes or feet, with the dumb fascination ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... bondages that have been heaped upon them by people of the Dark Ages because they are women. Even those who talk so much about woman's rights, are in bondage up to their necks. Look at Laura Stevenson in Orangeville; a fine bright young girl, who makes a hobby of woman's rights, and yet see the bondage she is in. A fine young man whom she was supposed to respect very much, lay sick in his cabin all alone, and with all her talk about her independence and freedom, ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... answered Nelson, quite pleased with the encomiums which his pet hobby received; "and a better organized fire department is ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... in town one sees one's friends. For a sick man, or whatever you like to call me, my taste is decidedly gregarious. "I would not shut me from my kind." Oh dear no! There is no study so interesting as human nature, and I am avowedly a student of anthropology; London is the place for a man with a hobby like mine.' ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... this investigation was the outward and apparent hobby of Phillotson at present—his ostensible reason for going alone into fields where causeways, dykes, and tumuli abounded, or shutting himself up in his house with a few urns, tiles, and mosaics he had collected, instead of calling ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... children's summer house, near which is a cottage with toilette rooms, closets, etc., for the use of ladies and children. Near by are a number of self-acting swings, and a little to the north is the Carrousel, a circular building, containing a number of hobby-horses, which are made to gallop around in a circle by the turning of a crank in the centre of the machine. To the west of this building is the base-ball ground, covering some forty or fifty acres. A commodious brick cottage has been erected here ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... chorus, modulating the voice according to the theme. Symposia is not an unbefitting term. Meetings are held for public competition in gidayu recitation; but in the privacy of one's circle and hobby the banquet is an important feature—at least to the guests. In his history of "Japanese Literature" (Dai Nihon Bungaku Shi, pp. 591-596) Suzuki Cho[u]ko[u] gives a long extract from the play, as sample of Tsuruya's powers as a dramatist. Adopted into the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... his arguments he lays down general principles with a quaint extravagance which marks the peculiar humor of the man. "No government has the right to make hobby-horses, asses, and slaves of the subject; nature having made sufficient of the two former, for all the lawful purposes of man, from the harmless peasant in the field to the most refined politician in the cabinet; but none of the last, which infallibly proves that they are unnecessary." ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... the day was done I found that deep down in him somewhere he had a passion, quiet as he was—a passion for reforming petty public abuses. He stood for citizenship—it was his hobby. His idea was that every citizen of the republic ought to consider himself an unofficial policeman, and keep unsalaried watch and ward over the laws and their execution. He thought that the only effective way ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... author of the inscription recorded his name, as did the learned Dame Elizabeth Hobby on a brass ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... his ability to read faces. It was his particular hobby, and the leisure he had to apply to it had given him a remarkable appraising eye. Within ten minutes he had read much more than had greeted his eye. A wave of pity went over him—pity for the patient, the girl, and his friend. The poor old imbecile! ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... a hobby of it," he snarled. "I don't even care if they're ladies. But I'm fresh out of romance and slightly soured. And I'm worried about the one friend who's dumb enough to stick by me. You picked a bad time to ask. ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... man, the untamed animal man, self-reliant and self-assertant, having conquered Nature. Well, this fierce masterful freedom was good for the soul, sometimes, doubtless. It was old Knowles's vital air. He wondered if the old man would succeed in his hobby, if he could make the slavish beggars and thieves in the alleys yonder comprehend this fierce freedom. They craved leave to live on sufferance now, not knowing their possible divinity. It was a desperate remedy, this sense of unchecked liberty; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... the vulgar were delighted with it. The wise thought it very foolish, but the many thought it very funny, and the idle amused themselves by chalking it upon walls, or scribbling it upon monuments. But "all that's bright must fade," even in slang. The people grew tired of their hobby, and "There he goes with his eye out!" was heard no more in ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... stage of their history that the Spencers grew proud, making a hobby of their family tree and even possibly breathing a ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... Langley is kind, but he is so wrapped up in his own work that I see very little of him. I took the place because I thought it would give me a good deal of spare time that I might use in furthering some experiments of my own. Electricity is my hobby, and I have one or two ideas that I am foolish enough to hope may be worth developing. I have had time enough, goodness knows, but it's a lonesome sort of life. If it had not been for the captains—and you—I think I should have given it ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Falcon and Tassel-gentle, The Laner and Laneret, The Bockerel and Bockeret, The Saker and Sacaret, The Merlin and Jack Merlin, The Hobby and Jack: There is the Stelletto of Spain, The Blood-red Rook from Turkey, The Waskite from Virginia: And there is of short-winged Hawks, The Eagle and Iron The Goshawk and Tarcel, The Sparhawk and Musket, The ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which, though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will. They were all cheerful, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... weather, which was his one disagreeable, superior-to-others trick. Most of his qualities were likable, and he was likable, though a queer fellow in some ways, said his best friends—the ones who called him "Petro." When the ship played that she was a hobby-horse or a crab (if that is the creature which shares with elderly Germans a specialty for walking from side to side), also a kangaroo, and occasionally a boomerang, Peter Rolls ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... dealt with them as it is said the Indians are dealt with; they have given them counterfeit brooches and bugle-bracelets for gold and silver;[A] pins and peacock feathers for lands and tenements; gilded coaches and outlandish hobby-horses for goodly castles and ancient mansions; their woods are turned into wardrobes, their leases into laces; and their goods and chattels into guarded coats and gaudy toys. Should your Majesty fly to them for relief, you would fare like those birds that peek at painted fruits; all outside." ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... whom Jimmy subsequently discovered to be the drama-loving Charteris, leaning back and taking advantage of a pause, "is the hobby of the sportsman and the life work of the avaricious." He took a little pencil from his waistcoat pocket, and made a rapid note ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... tablets; he's smart too, and has the right kind of stuff in him, even if he is crazy about birds. I've had to kill three of his linnets already. I told him that a weasel had gotten them, but he's found another hobby, now he paints all the time. He's left the marks of his heels on his Greek already, and is doing pretty well with his Latin, although his master's too easy with him; won't make him stick to one thing. He comes to me to get me to give him ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... asset, and his hobby. There were five of them. The two best, Baldy and Button, were Kentucky coon hounds in their prime, probably being descendants of the English fox hound with the admixture of harrier and bloodhound strains. Their breed has been in the family ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... ride my hobby on the curb," said Horace, laughing, as he went back to his own office, where he found that all his former certainty and enjoyment of his work had returned to him, and by the end of the day he had made so much progress that his designs needed only a few finishing ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... 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 to meet one of his major propositions ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... straight to their front) had apparently been watching our performance with eager interest, because there was a fatuous grin on the face of every one of them, officers and all. The colonel of the Rifle Brigade said to me afterwards that he trusted the staff did not mean to make a hobby of these knock-about-turns on parade, because if they did it would undermine the discipline ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... I am thirty," I responded. "Haven't you remembered each anniversary since I was five, beginning with a hobby-horse and working up through knives and rifles and ponies to the latest thing ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the rudiments of education in the best establishment for the purpose that the neighborhood afforded. It was what was called, in popular parlance, an "old field school-house;" humble enough in its pretensions, and kept by one of his father's tenants named Hobby, who moreover was sexton of the parish. The instruction doled out by him must have been of the simplest kind, reading, writing, and ciphering, perhaps; but George had the benefit of mental and moral culture at home, from ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... until then that Dr. O'Rell had made a special study of dreams, of their causes and of their signification. I had always supposed that astrology was his particular hobby, in which science I will concede him to be deeply learned, even though he has never yet proved to my entire satisfaction that the reason why my copy of Justinian has faded from a royal purple to a pale blue is, first, ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... racket at tennis, was always ready to contribute a baritone solo to charity concerts, and gave freely to the poor. He was what you might call a golden-mean man, good-hearted rather than magnetic, with no serious vices and no heroic virtues. For a hobby, he had taken up the collecting of porcelain vases, and he was engaged to Betty Weston, a charming girl of twenty-five, a lifelong ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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
... who should be sent on this honourable mission, the Society were for a long time much perplexed, and began to fear the "foundering of their hobby from want of a jockey of required weight." It was necessary that he should be deeply imbued with classic lore, and profoundly skilled in languages, because he was to "detect lingual affinities," and further, might have to read manuscripts, and decipher inscriptions, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... unknown benefactor is dressed in top-boots, riding breeches of honourable antiquity, a 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 hands ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... Countess, "you must not speak in this wild fashion. We women of the Royal House must fully realize our privileges—and as for the Admiral's wonderful tale of world conquest—that is only his latest hobby. It is talked, of course, in military circles, but the defensive war is so dull, you know, especially for the Royal officers, that they must have ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... he minded him of a new book he had in his bag, for literature, he judged, might be her hobby, and had engaged her in conversation, of which his share was meant to impress the tiny, translucent ear that nestled in the dark-brown coils and waves of the pretty ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... hours' stage-ride. However, as long as the couple had a roof over their heads and the Springs continued to plop and vomit their strange, chameleon-colored slime, Leander would continue to bring home the sick and the suffering for Polly and the Springs to practice on. Health became his hobby, and in time, with isolation thrown in, it began to invade his common sense. He tried in succession all the diet fads of the day and wound up a convert to the "Ralston" school of eating. Aunt Polly had clung a little longer to the flesh-pots, but ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... the Naughty Girl Reformed. The Sister Gift, or the Naughty Boy Reformed. Hobby Horse or Christian Companion. Robin Good-Fellow, A Fairy Tale. Puzzling Cap, A Collection of Riddles. The Cries of London as exhibited in the Streets. Royal Guide or Early Introduction to Reading English. Mr Winloves Collection of Stories. " " ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... Howard, Sir Robert Southwell, Sir Richard Leuison, 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 ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... novels: 'Children of the Mist,' 'Rose of Death,' 'Conqueror's Road.' They were no kid stuff. Why, yesterday I'd never even have thought of some of the ideas I used in my detective stories, that I published under a nom-de-plume. And my hobby, chemistry; I was pretty good at that. Patented a couple of processes that made me as much money as my writing. You think a thirteen-year-old just dreamed all that up? Or, here; you speak French, don't you?" He switched languages and spoke at some length in good conversational ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... when he found them brought forward as a recommendation; but he could only explain that the Pursuivant was an old established county gentleman's style of paper, in the agricultural interest. Whereupon the Squire mounted his political hobby in such sort and with such abusive violence, especially as to the local representatives of the adverse party, that Felix could not help feeling that if such were indeed the opinions of his own side, he should certainly be on the other. One good effect was the sparing ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Besides, he remembered her course on one occasion when he was in a great strait. He was but three years old then, but he remembered all about it. It was, in fact, this occurrence which had given him his hobby. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... dipsomaniac wife. She is, of course, under care, and is never mentioned in the house where he lives, maybe with his widowed mother and perhaps a maiden sister. They notice that he has become gloomy and brooding of late, but he lives his usual life, occupying himself each day with some harmless hobby. On foggy nights, once the quiet household is plunged in sleep, he creeps out of the house, maybe between one and two o'clock, and swiftly makes his way straight to what has become The Avenger's murder area. Picking out a likely victim, he approaches her with Judas-like gentleness, ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his back, and could never enter a boat again. In those days there were no pensions, so for forty years and more he had made a living by inventing riddles and puzzles, tricks of various kinds, and clever Christmas toys. His especial hobby was mathematical puzzles. He used to drop into the station quite frequently, for he was very ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and accompanied well enough. This time there was perfect silence, and the enthusiasm for my playing increased with each movement. At the end of the quartet so much flattery was heaped upon me that I trotted out my hobby-horse,—the G variations of Rode. With this piece I made quite a sensation, and for the remainder of the evening I was the object of ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... is quite a hobby of his," here interposed Mr. Winston. "He makes lengthy speeches on the subject, and has published two of them in pamphlet form. Have ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... that every single one of them cost me a Louis-d'or? But it is my hobby to have generally everything of the ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... his splendid height, was love—a strong, active love. We were young, human things, of soft features gradually becoming firmer as of shallow characters gradually deepening. And he longed to be in it all—at work in the deepening. We were his hobby. I have met many such lovers of youth. Indeed, I think this is ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the great artist, his face expanding like that of a man whose hobby is stroked, "an allegorical figure of Harmony; and if you will come and see it, you will understand why it should have taken me two years to paint it. Everything is in it! At the first glance one divines the destiny of the globe. A queen holds a shepherd's crook in her ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... protect emigrants, and to supply a military basis for such forces as should be required to hold the disputed country. Though the Secretary of War indorsed this view,[416] Congress was not disposed to anticipate the occupation of the prairies. Nebraska became almost a hobby with Douglas. He introduced a second bill in 1848,[417] and a third in 1852,[418] all designed to prepare ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... best fruits of education, and it is 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 kind or department of knowledge, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... other claims and other interests. In 1830 he married Emily, daughter of Lord Cowper, who bore him several children, and who shared all his interests with the fullest sympathy; and henceforth his greatest joys and his deepest sorrows were always associated with his family life. At home his first hobby was astronomy. At the age of twenty-eight he was ardently devoted to it and would spend all his leisure on it for weeks together, till graver duties absorbed his time. But he was no recluse, and all through his ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... It had been one of the hardest months through which Jimmie Dale had ever lived. The St. James, that most exclusive club, his favourite haunt, had seen nothing of him; the easel in his den, that was his hobby, had been untouched; there had been days even when he had not crossed the threshold of his home. Every resource at his command he had called into play in an effort to solve the mystery. For nearly the entire month, following first this lead and then that, he had ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... and posing that day as an American,—one of those men who look as if they would bleed water if you pricked them with a bayonet,—needed no second warning. Running the German gauntlet was not precisely his hobby. Down went the emergency brake and the car jolted ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... are introduced many very graceful plays and contrivances, but these do not stop long; they only approach where the king is and then go out. Then there enter others in other fashion, with battles of people on horseback; these horses are like the hobby-horses made in Portugal for the feast of the Corpo de Dios; others come with casting-nets, fishing, and capturing the men that are in the arena. When these amusements are ended, they begin to throw up many rockets and many different sorts of fires, also castles that burn and fling out ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... world is welcome to inquire into my motives. As I understand them, they are: First, I take pleasure in your society, sir, because, like myself, you are a quiet, thinking man. Second, you have a hobby—your machine, there—and I admire people with hobbies. Third, I am fond of children, and—and—your daughter is a very pleasant, intelligent child. Fourth, you have insisted on selling me an interest in your ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... he looked at his daughter"—if you would wait and take some dinner with us now. Tomorrow you could explore the woods, which are really worth seeing though monotonous, and if you are at all interested I should like to show you our little works. But I warn you the affair is my hobby, as well as my business for the time being, and I am apt to assume others have as great an interest in it as myself. You must not let me ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... desirable, of course. All the same she might leave you a little leisure to play round with your hobby. You mustn't work too hard or Sam will ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... the public functionaries, the difference between the sum proposed and accepted being settled against the interests of Mynheer Krause, by the party putting him in possession of some government movement which had hitherto been kept in petto. Every man has his hobby, and usually pays dear for it, so did ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of living ashore," he told himself. "A man can choose what hobby he will and, if he don't like it, pick ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... engaged. He and his charming fiancee plan to run out of excuses during the early Fall of 1994, but this date may be changed at any time by mutual agreement, or the end of the world. He has given up an interest in river pollution in favor of a new hobby, grading type-cleaner. Garrett, who spends an hour each day expanding his repertoire, now claims the ability to distinguish year and vineyard for over ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... vows to live a life of religious worship or service. Devout adherents of a cult or religion. Persons fervently devoted to a leader or ideal; faithful followers. Persons filled with enthusiasm, as for a pursuit or hobby; enthusiasts. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... other day by the thoroughly pertinent questions which you put in the House of Commons, and which the Government failed to answer. It put an idea in my head that you were perhaps the man who might take up a task which I am almost ready to give up. Mataafa is now known to be my hobby. People laugh when they see any mention of his name over my signature, and the Times, while it still grants me hospitality, begins to lead the chorus. I know that nothing can be more fatal to Mataafa's cause than that he should be made ridiculous, and I cannot help feeling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... escape; a device all his own of great wooden wedges raising the lower end of the mattress so that his feet were on a level with his pillowed head; the chest of little drawers which his daughters called "father's hobby," nailed high on the wall and filled with all sorts of odds and ends, the detritus and possible repair-material of years of housekeeping—all this Sissy took in with the unseeing eyes one has for ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... psychoanalysts would say, project his libido upon automobiles, and he will describe a difference in carburetors by looking at the rear end of a car a city block away. That is why it is often such a relief when the talk turns from "general topics" to a man's own hobby. It is like turning from the landscape in the parlor to the ploughed field outdoors. It is a return to the three dimensional world, after a sojourn in the painter's portrayal of his own emotional response to his own inattentive memory of what he imagines ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... he do, then, but take up what he calls a hobby! He buys and gloats over every silly detective story that was ever written; practises disguises and making himself up, as he calls it; takes lessons in conjuring; haunts the police courts; consorts with criminals—in ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an evasive person—a past master in avoiding observation, as I well knew. It had always been a hobby of his, he had told me, of watching persons without himself ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... called to see his niece. Severe in taste, he cast long, disdainful looks at the tapestries and the artistic trifles that adorned the house. In his opinion, it was rubbish and the luxury of a decaying age. He never changed his tune, always riding the hobby-horse of an aesthetic moralist. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... to say "No" at the proper time. The loss in scattering one's powers is too great to contemplate with comfort. I had a witty partner who once remarked, "I have great respect for James Bunnell, for he has but one hobby at a time." I knew the inference. A man who has too many hobbies is not respectable. He is not even fair to the hobbies. I have always been overloaded and so not efficient. It is also my habit to hold on. It seems almost impossible to drop what I have taken ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... succeeding century. The son of a Polish exile of German extraction, Hartlib had settled in England about 1627. He found the country behindhand both economically and socially, and with benign fervour applied himself to its regeneration. Agriculture was his principal hobby, and he effected much towards its improvement in England, rather however by editing the unpublished treatises of Weston and Child than by any direct contributions of his own. Next among the undertakings ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... many novels to treat these desirable attributes as if they were ends and objects of life in themselves. It has also misled him but too often into depicting a world of suicides, ignoring or overlooking a secret hobby, or passion, or chimaera which is the one thing that renders existence endurable to so many of the waifs and strays of life. He takes existence sadly—too sadly, it may well be; but his drabs and greys provide an atmosphere that is almost ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... first teacher was a poor sexton, whose name was Mr. Hobby. There is a story that he had been too poor to pay his passage from England, and that he had, therefore, been sold to Mr. Washington as a slave for a short time; but how true this is, I ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... ages. The overleaning rock, which is separated from my temporary home only by a few yards, probably afforded shelter to generations of those degraded human beings from whom the anthropologist who puts no bridle on his hobby-horse is pleased to claim descent. Near the base is one of those symmetrically scooped-out hollows which are such a striking peculiarity of the formation here, and which suggest to the irreverent that a cheese-taster of prehistoric dimensions must have been brought ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... potters in the garden, teaches the dog tricks. It makes him happy to feel himself rushed, and to go carrying unopened letters at tea-time. They have no children. Mrs. Jowett is a dear. She collects servants as other people collect prints or old china or Sheffield plate. They are her hobby, and she has the most wonderful knack of managing them. Even now, when good servants seem to have become extinct, and people who need five or six are grubbing away miserably with one and a charwoman, she has four pearls with soft voices and gentle ways, experts at their ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... to do will be to put a little note in." All the time he was fixing the camera on the tripod, focussing the lens on a tree by the path. (It was amazing how quickly Bones mastered the technique of any new hobby he took up.) ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... companionship. She was perfectly content with her life, and none the less so although those to whom she recounted the various phases of it were not so content at second hand with hearing the recital of it. She was one of those fortunate persons who have a hobby which takes the place of parents, husband, children, relations—a hobby, moreover, which appears to afford a delight quite independent of the varying degrees of success with which it is pursued. Unhappily the joy of those who thus ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... has been taken into the German language lately, but Germans use it when we should use "hobby." "It is my sport," says an artist when he shows you furniture of his own design. He means that his business in life is to paint pictures, but his pleasure is to invent beautiful chairs and tables. When the talk turns on the absurd extreme to which the Marthas ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... seesawing and urging it forward as if it were a horse at full speed. The visitor, to humor the patient, said, "That 's a fine horse you are riding.'' "Why, no,'' said the patient, "this is not a horse.'' "What is it, then?'' asked the visitor. The patient answered, "It 's a hobby.'' "But,'' said the visitor, "what 's the difference between a horse and a hobby?'' "Why,'' said the patient, "there 's an enormous difference; a horse you can get off from, a hobby ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... there was in a certain law school an aged and eccentric professor. "General information" was the old gentleman's hobby. He held it as incontrovertible that if a young lawyer possessed a large fund of miscellaneous knowledge, combined with an equal amount of common sense, he would be successful in life. So every year the professor put on his examination papers a question very far removed from the ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... his wife. John assumed a meek expression; and Mrs. John, putting the baby in the cradle, turned to her brother-in-law. "I thought the Army was a hobby ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... York that I saw you, for I have never been to Algiers, and I'm certain I have seen you somewhere. I'm afraid you will think me a bore for sticking to the point like this, but the fact is, the one thing I pride myself on is my memory for faces. It's a hobby of mine. If I think I remember a face, and can't place it, I worry myself into insomnia. It's partly sheer vanity, and partly because in my job a good memory for faces is a mighty fine asset. It has helped ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... except the name plate. In fact, the two firms, with others, have a "gentleman's agreement" sharing patents, keeping up separate plants only to preserve the appearance of competition. (Confound it—excuse me, Miss Stanley—there's my hobby again. Shouldn't have said that, but let it go.) Trusting you will find this satisfactory in every particular, and hoping to be favored by your future orders, I am, etc.'—Got ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... countenance of Baumgartner follow the brutal features of the meerschaum Turk through a melting cloud of smoke. The boy had been taken aback. But his bewilderment was of briefer duration than might have been the case with a less ardent photographer; for he took a technical interest in his hobby, and read the photographic year-books, nearly as ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... no charme for the tooth-ake, old signior, walke aside with mee, I haue studied eight or nine wise words to speake to you, which these hobby-horses ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... was a development of Mr. Simcox's hobby as natural as the development of any other hobby from rabbit breeding to china collecting. The craze intensifies, the scope is enlarged. To have a secretary made Mr. Simcox's mail and the work that produced ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... down," cried Cecil cheerily, "and unburden thyself to me of all save affairs of State; of them am I exceeding weary, for the King hath a new hobby, a tax on beets and onions, in the discussion of which the afternoon has ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... Most men have a hobby. Timbrell-Timson's is to bear on his narrow shoulders the burden of Middle Europe. He calls it Mittel-Europa. Lately he has been sharing his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... recorded in history, probably, are so many personal anecdotes related, as of Henry IV. These are for the most part well known, and of easy access. Among them stands out prominently the tale of the Spanish ambassador who to his astonishment, found Henry on the floor playing hobby-horse for his children. "Are you a father?" asked Henry, looking up without any apparent embarrassment. "Yes, your majesty." "Then we will finish our game," said the king. And he did so, before taking up his business with ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... 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, on the other hand, nothing could be more beneficial ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... His great hobby, it appeared, was antiquarian research, and though he let slip a few remarks that showed he was well versed in his subject, his role, as usual, was that of the flatteringly eager enquirer. Needless to say, his learning had been acquired by diligent application within the last week, ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... again sighed heavily. "You seem to think I am a sort of mountebank who makes a hobby of paying court to women. You misjudge me, Myra. True, I have made love to women before, true, many have fallen in love with me and thrown themselves at my head—as you ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... The men are hobby-riders. They have just one interest and that usually small and dull—stocks or iron or real estate or hunting or automobiles. Our women are not like the English women—stupid, sodden. They are alive, acute. They wish to be ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... a paper for some magazine or review, and can think of nothing else. You know what he is when he once gets mounted on his hobby! He would have thought it a terrible waste of time to have left his papers to ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... Laura joined them, her father's eye was caught and held by the ring upon her finger. Roger knew rings, they were his hobby, and this huge yellow solitaire in its new and brilliant setting at once awakened his dislike. It just fitted the life they were to lead! What life? As he listened to his daughter he kept wondering ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... my first glimpse of Charlie's hobby. And from the luck-less moment when I so innocently invited him to mount it, up to the time when I forcibly compelled him to dismount from it, I had ample opportunity to exercise my "smiling patience, sublime dignity and heroic fortitude." Whether or not I improved my opportunities properly, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... the case to the Society," said her brother, promptly. "Father believes all charity should be done through organizations. 'Organized effort' is his hobby," added Walter, ruefully. "He says I lack ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... precious and extraordinary volumes, and over the bookcases hung pictures of the Barbizon school. These books and these pictures were the elegant monument of hobbies which their owner had outlived. His present hobby happened to be music. A Steinway grand-piano was prominent in the chamber, and before the ebony ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... life seems to have been associated with the search for that dreadful book," she said. "I wonder if it is one of Kensky's own binding. You know," she went on, "that Israel Kensky bound books for a hobby? He bound six for me, and ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... from our windows in Baker Street to see the loom of the opposite houses. The first day Holmes had spent in cross-indexing his huge book of references. The second and third had been patiently occupied upon a subject which he had recently made his hobby—the music of the Middle Ages. But when, for the fourth time, after pushing back our chairs from breakfast we saw the greasy, heavy brown swirl still drifting past us and condensing in oily drops upon the window-panes, my comrade's impatient and active nature could ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... clears the ground for God very ably, and then makes a well-meaning gesture in the vacant space. There is no help nor strength in his gesture unless God is there. Without God, the "Service of Man" is no better than a hobby or a sentimentality or an hypocrisy in the undisciplined prison of ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... nor prophet Am I, though a jingler of rhymes— 'Tis a hobby of mine, and I'm off it At times, and I'm on it at times; And whether I'm off it or on it, Your readers my counsels will shun, Since I scarce know Van Tromp from Blue Bonnet, Though I might ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... of information than I can count.—George Thomason was a London bookseller of the Civil War time; his place of business being the "Rose and Crown" in St. Paul's Churchyard. He was of Royalist sympathies; but his hobby was to collect impartially all the pamphlets, broad-sheets, &c., that teemed from the press on both sides, and not only those that teemed from the English press, but also all published abroad that bore on current English questions. He began ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the love of woman is to the race of young men. It supplanted that foolishness. It was his Romance, as we say; that buoyant anticipation on which in youth we ride the airs, and which, as we wax older and too heavy for our atmosphere, hardens to the Hobby, which, if an obstinate animal, is a safer horse, and conducts man at a slower pace to the sexton. Adrian had never travelled. He was aware that his romance was earthly and had discomforts only to be evaded by the one potent talisman possessed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... persons in your town, or in your university, about their favorite hobbies, and feature the story as "Riding Hobby Horses with ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... he was making a sorry impression, he tried to get away from the subject. I say tried, for till a man can double like a hare he will never get away from his hobby. "Excuse me," said he; "I ought never to speak about it. Let us talk of something else. You cannot enter into my feelings; it makes my blood boil. Oh, Miss Bruce! you can't conceive what a disinherited man feels—and I live at the ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... monopolizing a girl two or three years older. He'll make you mend his gloves, and he'll beg your hair-ribbons for hat-strings; and when you're not dancing or playing croquet with him, he'll be after you with some boy-hobby or other, wanting you to sympathize and help. 'I know their tricks and their manners.'" But she looked amused and kind while she threatened, and Leslie only smiled ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... "hobby of hobbies." Only the big hobbies of your man are worth especial study. Never harp on any of his little idiosyncracies. He may be sensitive about being eccentric. It is bad salesmanship to pretend an interest in another person's whims. ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... inspiration. They had too many builders,—and no architect. They thought to make up the lack of a head by a superfluity of hands. This is a characteristic of Hurry. It seeks ever to make energy a substitute for a clearly defined plan,—the result is ever as hopeless as trying to transform a hobby-horse into a real ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... in this year of Peace 1947," responded his dragoman, arresting him before a statue; "for the development of this hobby has been peculiar since you were here in 1910, when the childlike and contortionist movement was just beginning to take ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... face tighten into a frown of perplexity. That wasn't like Literate First Class Stephen S. Bayne. He made quite a hobby of pinching salesgirls behind the counter which was one thing; the boss' daughter ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... expect others to do without, too—the whole thing would be no good if the others had to; she knew that. No, the debt could not be paid this way; she had no right to do it; it was her own fancy, her hobby, perhaps. No one demanded that it should be paid; law did not compel it; Rawson-Clew did not expect it; her father considered that it no longer existed; it was to please herself and herself alone that she would pay it, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... artist loves money chiefly because it represents luxury, the American business man loves it chiefly because it is the sole proof of success in his endeavor. He loves his business. It is not his toil, but his hobby, passion, vice, monomania—any vituperative epithet you like to bestow on it! He does not look forward to living in the evening; he lives most intensely when he is in the midst of his organization. His instincts are best appeased by the hourly excitements of a good, scrimmaging commercial day. ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... The dispensary was Woodman's hobby. The old-fashioned drug store stood on a corner of the Bowery, and in the rear extension which opened on the side street, he had established what he had laughingly called his "Life Line," a free dispensary where any man needing medicine or a doctor's advice could have it without ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... however, does not spurn them. On the contrary, though he pretends not to notice camels, cows, or buffaloes, he whinnies and prances with delight when he meets anything of his own shape, and assumes hobby-horse attitudes, much to the alarm of Cleopatra and Miss Hassett-Bean. Also, just to remind everybody that sand is his element, he shies at water, and almost swoons at sight of the Fayoum ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... last," said Mrs. Wescott, laughing, and then added, with enthusiasm, "It certainly is splendid for you to have the chance. I know your pet hobby has always been to visit Switzerland, Lucy, and now you will, provided you get that far. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield |
