"Hobby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was not large or of great importance, but it was a favourite hobby of the Highlander, and, at the time, was in full bloom, luxuriant with fruit, flower, and vegetable. To save it from destruction at such a time, McKay would have given almost anything, and have gone almost any lengths. On this occasion, not knowing ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... few, so few that they tell us hardly anything. We know when and where Washington was born; and how, when he was little more than three years old,[1] he was taken from Bridges Creek to the banks of the Rappahannock. There he was placed under the charge of one Hobby, the sexton of the parish, to learn his alphabet and his pothooks; and when that worthy man's store of learning was exhausted he was sent back to Bridges Creek, soon after his father's death, to live with his half-brother Augustine, and obtain the benefits ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... poison. But was this man obliged to drink full bumpers by any rule of civility? he was also the man of the whole army with whom the advantage in drinking, remained. And he never refused to play at noisettes, nor to ride the hobby-horse with children, and it became him well; for all actions, says philosophy, equally become and equally honour a wise man. We have enough wherewithal to do it, and we ought never to be weary of presenting the image of this great ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... report, but it was not until 1871 that action on the subject was secured.[44] George W. Curtis says that at first he "pressed it upon an utterly listless Congress, and his proposition was regarded as the harmless hobby of an amiable man, from which a little knowledge of practical politics would soon dismount him."[45] Most members of Congress thought the reform a mere vagary, and that it was brought forward at a most inopportune time.[46] Mr. Jenckes was the ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... birds, rise higher in the air than any rapacious bird, and this is often a cause of safety. Their greatest enemy is the Hobby (Hypotriorchis sublutes). They fear him greatly, so that as soon as one appears singing ceases, and each suddenly closes his wings, falls to the earth and hides against the soil. But some have mounted so high to pour out their clear song that they cannot hope to reach ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... Among other resemblances, there are moments when, to a quiet contemplator, it suggests the image of one of those rotatory entertainments commonly seen in fairs, and known by the name of "whirligigs or roundabouts," in which each participator of the pastime, seated on his hobby, is always apparently in the act of pursuing some one before him, while he is pursued by some one behind. Man, and woman too, are naturally animals of chase; the greatest still finds something to follow, and there is no one too humble not to be an object of prey to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... that summer was the opening of a Grand International Exhibition—the hobby of the Governor of the town—Baron de Pretis, and Burton thus refers to it in a letter written to Mr. Payne, 5th August (1882). "We arrived here just in time for the opening of the Exhibition, August 1st. Everything went off ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... attributed—this power of facing 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. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... ultimate triumph of the Democratic 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... fit seized her she would come along and help. In order to encourage us in this work, Her Majesty would give a small present to the one who showed the best results so we naturally did our best in order to please her, as much as for the reward. Another hobby of Her Majesty's was the rearing of chickens, and a certain number of birds were allotted to each of the Court ladies. We were supposed to look after these ourselves and the eggs had to be taken to Her Majesty every morning. I could not understand why it was ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... 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 ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... extending its scraggy and shattered remnants to a considerable distance over the greensward which had been, from time immemorial, trodden by the merry morrice dancers, and broken by the curvetting of the hobby-horse and the Dragon of Wantley, sports it was now deemed sinful but to name. From a fragment of this dilapidated branch, hung the sign of mine host of the Oliver's Head; and right glad would he ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... here is the only one common to all the newspapers, morning and evening alike. The advertisements are not identical, sir, but they have two points of similarity, or perhaps I should say three. They all profess to furnish a cure for absent-mindedness; they all ask that the applicant's chief hobby shall be stated, and they all bear the same address: Dr. Willoughby, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... was evidently riding a hobby, and what I wanted to know was the plan on which he had formed his library. So I brought him back to the point by asking him the question in ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... murderous gang-hook last summer; and when you did finally get a bass didn't you feel prouder than if you just 'yanked' him in, perhaps caught on the outside of his gills with some of that deadly jewelry?" demanded Jerry, whose one hobby was the "square deal" in ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... Really! Yes, she would mention it, I suppose. She mentions it to everybody; it's a sort of hobby of hers, like my humble self, and the roses. She has been more insistent of late and at last I consented to oblige her. Do you know, Knowles, I think she was rather fearful that I might be smitten by your Miss Morley. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... hobby," said Mr. Bullfinch. "People need to have a hobby when they retire and mine is auctions. Greatest sport I know of. Course you're likely to pick up a few things you haven't any immediate need for but at least you get something for your money. Mrs. Bullfinch scolds me sometimes ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... dance the people assumed certain characters. There was always Robin Hood, the great hero of the rustics; Maid Marian, the queen, with gilt crown on her head; Friar Tuck; a fool, with his fool's-cap and bells; and, above all, the hobby-horse. This animal was made of pasteboard, painted a sort of pink color, and propelled by a man inside, who made him perform various tricks not common to horses, such as threading a needle and holding a ladle in his mouth ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... his flock so near the dancers, and the dancers will certainly frighten the cattle. But when we look farther into the picture, our feelings receive a sudden and violent shock, by the unexpected appearance, amidst things pastoral and musical, of the military: a number of Roman soldiers riding in on hobby-horses, with a leader on foot, apparently encouraging them to make an immediate and decisive charge on the musicians. Beyond the soldiers is a circular temple, in exceedingly bad repair, and close beside it, built against ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... and—well, none of us really knew just what she had become, but we knew that she was very rich, and very handsome, and had a leaning toward some sort of new religion. As for the Youngster—he was the son of an old chum of the Doctor—his ward, in fact—and his hobby was flying. ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... wishes to meet with a gentleman or lady to share her home as sole paying guest; one with a hobby for gardening preferred; every home comfort; terms, L300 per ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... and the maize in large quantities, deserve to be accounted fertile. It is true that if you be a soldier, you will examine, with interest, the ground over which the hostile armies manoeuvred both previous to the battle of Austerlitz and afterwards. If geology be your hobby, in the low but picturesque hills, the far-off roots of nobler mountains, which, in many places, hang over the road, and give to it an exceedingly romantic character, you will find something for the eye to rest upon. Various dilapidated castles, too, that ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... of the house was a good second to Lord Constantine. Anne moved about like herself in a dream. She was heavenly, and Arthur enjoyed it, offering incense to His Lordship, and provoking him into very English utterances. The young man's fault was that he rode his hobby too hard. ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... Laws, the landlords and a great part of the farmers promise theirs Heaven upon earth from the maintenance of the same laws. But in neither case do the property-holders succeed in winning the workers to the support of their pet hobby. Like the operatives, the agricultural labourers are thoroughly indifferent to the repeal or non-repeal of the Corn Laws. Yet the question is an important one for both. That is to say—by the repeal of the Corn ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... spinning their small strains, scraps of verse, song, and sonnet, and invariably on such subjects of commonplace, as can not admit of originality, and do not therefore task reflection. Not an infant dies or is born, but is made the subject of verse; nay, its smiles and tears are put on record; its hobby-horse, and its infant ideas as they begin to bud and breathe aloud. Then comes the eternal strain about summer blooms and spring flowers; autumn's melancholy and winter's storms, until one sickens of the intolerable monotony. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... she was rapidly outgrowing all her former delicacy. Many things which had been prohibited before were allowed her now, and her father's present was a new bicycle and the permission to ride it. Her mother gave her a sketching easel and Merle a camp-stool, for painting was at present her favourite hobby, and Uncle David and Aunt Nellie were lavish in books and music. From Bevis arrived a wooden box containing a kittiwake, which he had stuffed himself, with wings outspread. There was a hook in its ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... Ridware called "Gog and Magog," but only their huge decayed trunks remained. Abbots Bromley had some curious privileges, and some of the great games were kept up. Thus the heads of the horses and reindeers for the "hobby horse" games were to ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... happening of long duration should be recounted. A guest in telling any experience can break his own narration up into conversation by drawing into his talk, or recital, others who are interested in his hobby or in his experience. Responses to toasts at banquets may be somewhat longer than the individual speeches of a single person in general table-talk; but any dinner-speaker knows that even his response runs the risk of being spoiled if ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... awkward for us when people persist in saying how tired you're looking. Here's this huge house and garden. Surely you could be happy in—in—appreciating it for a change. Or you could take up some hobby." ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... young child, it must be dreadful to kill anything young. If it is cowardly for a man to kill a woman, it is cowardly for a man to kill the female sex in any shape or form. Yet, what scientist allows the matter of sex to interfere with the impalement of his beetle? Nor would he do so if his hobby were to impale human beings. If he searches for a beautiful beetle to kill, it only requires a broadening of his particular outlook for him to search for a beautiful woman to kill. There may be a perfectly sane and moral country in the world (although I have never heard ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... had a little hobby-horse, And it was dapple grey; Its head was made of pea-straw, Its tail was made ...
— Denslow's Mother Goose • Anonymous
... Lady Hobby—whose husband resided at Bisham Abbey, a fine old place, maintained in admirable repair, near Windsor—was a terrible disciplinarian, and there is an ugly story of her having whipped a wretched son of hers into his grave, from exasperation at his inability to make ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... Ebe I afterwards came to know well, and shall defer mention of her. So I was encompassed by kindly petticoats, and was very happy, but might have been better for a stout playmate of my own sex. I had a hobby-horse, which I rode constantly to fairy-land in quest of treasure to bestow upon my friends. I swung with Una on the gate, and looked out upon the wonder of the passing world. The tragedy of my grandmother's death, which, as I have ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... boy," the latter murmured, "he's off on his hobby. Let him go on! He enjoys it more than anything in ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... started once more upon his old hobby of the shellfish languages, there was no stopping the Doctor. He worked ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... full of home-like habits. He had at one time been fond of acting, had even rented a theatre in London, and on its boards had first seen Miss Marion Dawson, to whom he had offered his hand, his title, and the third of a county. Since his marriage this early hobby had become distasteful to him. Even in private theatricals it was no longer possible to persuade him to exercise the talent which he had often shown that he possessed. He was happier with a spud and a watering-can among ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that facade caught me quite by my weak point. There is a central doorway, and one into each aisle, and round the archways into these lateral doors are sculptured angels playing upon musical instruments. As I have told the reader, ancient forms of musical instruments are my hobby, or rather one of my hobbies. I at once pulled out my sketch-book and drew them; there are angels with fiddles, angels with viols—no, not hurdy-gurdys!—but twanged with the fingers, angels with pipes and horns, one ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... these debates, continued over the years, the Congress became a forum for the discussion of international Jewish problems and developed speakers and theorists of varying degrees of talent. It also produced men with hobbies. The Jewish National Fund and the Hebrew University was the hobby of Dr. Herman Schapiro. Colonization in Cyprus was the hobby of Davis Trietsch, who created many scenes on the floor of the Congress. Dr. Chaim Weizmann was not only a leader of the Democratic faction, crossing swords time and again with Herzl, but devoted ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... women and young boys, I must still take the other hand, and think there is no finer sight than a well-proportioned man, with a sense of his powers, and a desire to do justice to them, moving through the figures of a contra-dance. But this is my hobby, my dear, and I may have wearied you with it ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... intensity within reach. Stimulated by what could be done with electricity in this form, more and more people now busied themselves in experimenting with so fascinating a force of nature, until in the second third of the century a whole army of observers was at work, whether by way of profession or of hobby, finding out ever new manifestations ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... disgusted Colonel Mason with his flattery, and, on reaching Monterey, he opened what he called a law-office, but there were neither courts nor clients, so necessity forced him to turn his thoughts to something else, and quicksilver became his hobby. In the spring of 1848 an appeal came to our office from San Jose, which compelled the Governor to go up in person. Lieutenant Loeser and I, with a couple of soldiers, went along. At San Jose the Governor held some kind of a court, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... family portraits hung on the walls, but the present squire had rather pushed them aside in favour of his own peculiar hobby. He collected antique Italian pictures—many on panels—in the pre-Raphaelite style. Some of these he had picked up in London, others he had found and purchased on the Continent. There were saints with glories or nimbi round their heads, Madonnas ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... especially interested in ancient civilizations, lost cities, and the like, in the Western Hemisphere. Long before I left the ministry oil was struck on our little Pennsylvania farm, and—well, I didn't have to work after that. So for some years I've devoted myself strictly to my particular hobby of travel. And in my work I find it necessary to discard ceremony, and scrape acquaintance with all sorts and conditions. I especially cultivate clergymen. I've wanted to know you ever since I first saw you out here. But I couldn't wait for a formal introduction. And ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... from business. Also, to the chagrin of an army of suitors, she married an artist named Jason Jones, whose talent, it was said, was not so great as his luck. So far, his fame rested on his being "Tony Seaver's husband." But Tony's hobby was art, and she had recognized real worth, she claimed, in Jason Jones' creations. On her honeymoon she carried her artist husband to Europe and with him studied the works of the masters in all the art centers of the Continent. Then, enthusiastic and eager for Jason's advancement, she returned ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... at all in such a matter as this," he answered, "but you must remember that it is not only my profession—it is my hobby. Remember, too," he added, with a smile, "that I ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... covered her fourth share of the wall with "heroes". Whenever she saw that some member of His Majesty's forces had been awarded the V.C., she would cut out his portrait and add it to her gallery of honour. She wrote to her mother and her sister Nora to help her in this hobby, with the consequence that every letter which arrived for her contained enclosures. Her room-mates were on the whole good-natured, and in return for some contributions she had given to their collections they also wrote home for any V.C. portraits which could be procured. As the ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... circular in which he announced his candidacy he made no reference to national politics, but confined himself mainly to a discussion of the practicability of improving the navigation of the Sangamon, the favorite hobby of the place and time. He had no monopoly of this "issue." It formed the burden of nearly every candidate's appeal to the people in that year. The excitement occasioned by the trip of the Talisman ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... experimented on rocket ships for the past three years and can give some data on these as to the construction of models (for when I say ships I really mean model airplanes). I have had this as my hobby for the past four and a half years, and can give extensive information on model building. I specialize in models powered by power other than rubber; and I took second place at the Atlantic City Tournament held in October by the National Play-ground Association, in the ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... which is made up of these things. So God is more than the sum or essence of the nobler impulses of the race: he is a spirit, a person, a friend, a great brother, a captain, a king: he "is love and goodness" (p 80); and without him the Service of Man is "no better than a hobby, a sentimentality ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... following: "Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian (Robin's mistress and the queen or lady of the May), the fool, the piper, and several morris-dancers habited, as it appears, in various modes. Afterwards a hobby-horse and a dragon were added" (Douce). For a description of the game, see Scott's Abbot, ch. xiv., and the author's note. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... matter, my dear Ormond, which I wish you to lay to heart very seriously. Now do take an old man's advice and do not get up upon your Quixotic hobby-horse the moment you sniff what it is—for I suppose you have guessed it already. Yes, it is what you feared: I want to urge you to follow your mother's ardent wish and add commission business to your other work. I know very ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... years ago flying was popularly regarded as a dangerous hobby and comparatively few had faith in its practical purposes. But the phenomenal evolutions of the aircraft industry during the war brought progress which would otherwise have required a span of years. With the cessation of hostilities ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... the lawn. "And now, my dear sir," said the squire, "I know you are out on some errand of benevolence. You are a grand worker yourself, and a grand giver too, so tell us what is your present charitable hobby, and we must try and give you a help, so that you may ride ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... not, at some time, come under the spell of the collecting spirit and known the joy of accumulating specimens of something or other. The instinct has its corner, surely, in every breast. Of course, hobby-horses are of many different breeds; but all their riders belong to one great cavalcade, and when they know that one of their company has had his steed shot under him, they will not ride on without a backward glance of sympathy. Lest my fall be unnoted ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... an excellent hobby. "No sense a man's working his fool head off. I'm going out to the Game three times a week. Besides, fellow ought to support the ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Americans; I thought they were sympathetic, imaginative, and full of fine enthusiasms; the one thing I could not always feel clear about was their future. I believe they were happier in their frame-houses than most people in most houses; having democracy, good education, and a hobby of work; the one doubt that did float across me was something like, 'Will all this be here at all in two hundred years?' That was the first impression produced by the wooden houses that seemed like the waggons ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 beat ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... had already been so carefully trained by long and arduous practice in a life-school? His heart was in his work from first to last; beyond his bagpipes and his old books (for he was a passionate reader), he seemed to have no other hobby. His facility in sketching became phenomenal, as also his knowledge of what to put in and what to leave out, so that the effect he aimed at should be secured in perfection and with the ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... hobby," suggested Ainsworth; "that's the only way to choke Bently off. Where's Fenton? I never knew him quiet for so long in ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... 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 invention, in return for a small loan, and that fact ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... that Mr. Mifflin was well astride his hobby: he had started to tell the children about Robin Hood, but I had the sense to give him a wink. We had to be getting along or surely Andrew might be on us. So while Mifflin was putting Pegasus into the shafts again I picked ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... of habit, of purpose, is necessary. Some line of activities must be selected to fill in the vacuum. A hobby is needed, a devotion to some larger purpose, whether it be in work or social activity. "Nature abhors a vacuum"; boredom must be avoided, for that is a pain, awakening desire. The gymnasium, golf, sports of all kinds are substitute ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... to camp again. I hope Kay's'll try and behave decently. It'll be an effort for them; but I hope they'll make it. It would be an awful nuisance if young Billy made an ass of himself in any way. He loves making an ass of himself. It's a sort of hobby of his." ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... experiment at "plain living and high thinking," with its queer mixture of culture and agriculture, was Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance, which has for its background an idealized picture of the community life, whose heroine, Zenobia, has touches of Margaret Fuller; and whose hero, with his hobby of prison reform, was a type of the one-idead philanthropists that abounded in such an environment. Hawthorne's attitude was always in part one of reserve and criticism, an attitude which is apparent in the reminiscences of Brook Farm in ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... entrance to the bower is large enough to fill half a bushel. As these objects are of no use to the bird, its only motive for accumulating them must be an art-lover's hobby. Our common Magpie has similar tastes: any shiny thing that he comes upon he picks ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... priest, for his secretary and almoner, Louis made him successively clerical councillor in the parliament of Paris, then Bishop of Evreux, and afterwards cardinal; and he employed him in his most private affairs. It was a hobby of his thus to make the fortunes of men born in the lowest stations, hoping that, since they would owe everything to him, they would never depend on any but him. It is scarcely credible that so keen and contemptuous ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... on the Philadelphia Record. And my 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 ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... "SIR:—Mr. Hobby having claimed as his property a negro man now serving in the Massachusetts Regiment, you will please to order a court of inquiry, consisting of five as respectable officers as can be found in your brigade, ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... "Oh, my dear boy," she said, "life's too short for all that stuff, and there's no hobby so painful as cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. And, after all, what's the matter with Easthampton people? I'd go to a chauffeurs' ball if the band was the right ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... father," she said. "We met, a few months ago, for the first time since my marriage, and things have been a little difficult between us—just at first. He really scarcely ever puts in an appearance at Curzon Street. I dare say you have heard that he makes a hobby of an amazing country house which he ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that for several years he had felt unable, owing to the state of his health, to make chemical experiments. But idle he could not be; he must be at work upon something. As he often said, "without a hobby-horse, what is life?" So the saying is reported, but we may conclude that the "horse" is here an interpolation, for the difference between "a horse" and "a hobby" is radical—a man ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... includes the most practical part of it; the rest is a series of dissertations on bird flight, in which, evidently, the portrait painter's observations were far less thorough than those of da Vinci or Borelli. Taken on the whole, Walker was a man with a hobby; he devoted to it much time and thought, but it remained a hobby, nevertheless. His observations have proved useful enough to give him a place among the early students of flight, but a great drawback to his work is the lack of ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... wine of Cyprus was loosening every tongue, and each one was prancing on his favorite hobby, the doctor, in a gondola, was waiting for the Duchess, having sent her a note written by Vendramin. Massimilla appeared in her night wrapper, so much had she been alarmed by the tone of the Prince's farewell, and so startled by the hopes held ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... a part of life. It is not merely an accomplishment or a hobby, nor yet a means of relaxation from the strenuous business of earning a living. It is not an addendum or an excrescence: it is an actual part of the fabric of life itself. The object of these pages will be to show how closely Music, and indeed Art in general, has ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... the Northern Nut Growers Association is doing a very significant work. Our emphasis at the present time at least might very well be on nut growing as a hobby and for conservation, for better shade trees and for better living on the farms and homesteads rather than to emphasize the commercial angles. This will come in time if it can really be demonstrated that growing northern nut ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... 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
... woman of business. She is without home or child, and her time and labour are arranged with military precision. She has her theory of the poor and of what can be done for the poor, and she rides her hobby from morning to night with an equal contempt for the sentimental almsgiving of the District Visitor and for the warnings of the political economist. No doubt an amazing deal of good is done, but it is done in a methodical fashion that is a little trying to ordinary flesh ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... Day and an adjournment of the House of Commons! Mr. BALFOUR might well rub his eyes and wonder if there had been a revival of the Saturnian days when Lord ELCHO used annually to mount his favourite hobby and witch the House with noble horsemanship. But on this occasion the adjournment lasted only half-an-hour, and had nothing to do with Epsom. Chivalry, not sport, was its motive. The House merely wished to do honour to its Leader by assisting at the presentation of its wedding ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... 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 ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... itself and eats up the man who follows it, unless followed to some useful end. A man interested in a hobby for selfish purposes alone first refuses to look at anything outside of his hobby, and later turns his back on everything but his own idea of his hobby. The possible mental contraction which may follow, is almost unlimited, and such ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... of peace, 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
... when Ben Zoof had mounted his hobby-horse, and was indulging in high-flown praises about his beloved eighteenth arrondissement, the captain had remarked gravely, "Do you know, Ben Zoof, that Montmartre only requires a matter of some thirteen thousand feet to make it as high as ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... here, Maggie, you're talking straight and I'll talk straight and all. When I'm set I'm set. You're coming here. I didn't want you when that doctor said it, but, by gum, I want you now. It's been my daughters' hobby crossing me. Now you'll come ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... was somewhat startled by the contrast between the apparently shrunken volume of waters and the vast breadth of the lower river; hence Professor Smith's theory of underground caverns and communications, in fact of a subterraneous river, a favourite hobby in those days. But there is not a trace of limestone formation around, nor is there the hollow echo which inevitably would result from such a tunnel. Evidently the difference is to be accounted for by the rapidity of the torrent, the effect of abnormal ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... maturity, that every new insight, or realization of his own reveals the fact that you have been there before with commands, cultivating sentiments and habits, and not that he was led to mistake your convenience or hobby for duty, or failed to temper the will by temporizing with it. The young are apt to be most sincere at an age when they are also most mistaken, but if sincerity be kept at its deepest and best, will be least harmful ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... and all we'll have 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
... President rode the hobby of tree-culture, and some fine old trees should still remain to witness it, unless they have been improved off the ground; but his was a restless mind, and although he took his hobbies seriously ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... conducted on military principles, it was not peculiarly the school of the soldier. The principal believed in discipline; this was his hobby; and he believed that he could best secure system and order by adopting military routine. His success justified his theory. He had more ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... answered this excellent man. "I have taken considerable pains to see to it. As your mother and I have often agreed, there is no such safeguard for a young girl as a hobby or mania of ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... never sick and has had but little medical attention during his lifetime. His form is bent and he walks with a cane; although his going is confined to his home, it is from choice as he seldom wears shoes on account of bad feet. His eyesight is very good and his hobby is sewing. He threads his own needles without assistance of glasses as he has never ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... are riding your hobby and you ought to see you can't ride with all these fine people in your path. Come down at once or I'll desert you! Let's go in and hear that waltz," and Kate laughingly pulled the hobby-rider into the path that led to the conservatory where they ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... six children in his family, the oldest a man of about twenty-five, a graduate of the Imperial University, now a factory inspector for the government; he speaks eight languages. One of these is Esperanto, which is his hobby. The French Professors were there also, two of them, a clever and amusing pair, who did their duty in talking, and the young man spoke better than any of us and with an excellent pronunciation. He has never been out of Japan. Two little girls and a young boy ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... many of her men had fallen sick. The entire crew consisted of 260 men, including shipwrights, masons, carpenters, smiths, miners, and refiners. They took with them a good variety of music "for solace of our people, and allurement of the savages"; a number of toys, "as morris dancers, hobby horsse, and many like conceits to delight the savage people, whom we intended to winne by all faire meanes possible"; and also a stock of haberdashery wares for the purpose of barter. Gilbert reached St. John's on ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... the nephew replied. The two men walked on. But, for once, they were not thinking of their favorite hobby. The mind of each man dwelt upon Mollie's story of a poor little Indian girl. What connection could she have with these two ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... you to take up the cudgels, Mr. Ericson, and please don't misjudge me—of course I realize that I am only a silly old woman and that my passion to see the Winslows keep to their fine standards is old-fashioned, but you see it is a hobby of mine that I've devoted years to, and you who haven't known the Winslows so very long——" Her manner ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... "Come off your hobby, Lucy," cried he, "and speak to me like a woman and like my niece. If this is your objection, overcome ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... the Night Watchman comes around. Ever see the Night Watchman, Boston? I have. He's a grave old party with a long beard, and he carries a scythe. You see him when you're thirsty, and—well, in the pursuit of my inborn hobby for taking chances, I'll introduce you to him this trip. Permit me to remind you once more of the consequences if you help yourself to the water without consulting me. It'll militate against your chances of getting ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... 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 ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... checkered by the avenues of leafy trees. And now that Hazebroucke slumbers certain kilometres ahead, recall the summer evening when your dusty feet strolling up from the station tended hap-hazard to a Fair there, where the oldest inhabitants were circling round and round a barrel-organ on hobby- horses, with the greatest gravity, and where the principal show in the Fair was a Religious Richardson's—literally, on its own announcement in great letters, THEATRE RELIGIEUX. In which improving Temple, the dramatic representation was of ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... between the President of Hygeia and the Foreign Secretary of Tritonia as the minimum of hostilities; a wicked newspaper lord, who pulls strings in both countries, and a faithful butler to the Royal Family, who becomes assistant state nursemaid and cleans silver as a hobby. Though I quite agree with Miss EVELYN SHARP and the Ethurians that it is love that makes the world go round, I am not so sure that either hers or theirs is the best way of advocating their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... to look, to see beauty that is worth seeing," he safely generalised. But then—he had put his foot in the stirrup—his hobby bolted with him. "It takes two to make a beautiful object. The eye of the beholder is every bit as indispensable as the hand of the artist. The artist does his work—the beholder must do his. They are collaborators. Each must be the other's equal; and they must also be like ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... you do not make other people uncomfortable in the pursuit of your hobby. You will find that almost every one is afraid of bugs and toads and that most people live in a world full of wonderful things and only see a little beyond the ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... me, "What tree is that?" In summer I could usually tell an oak from a box elder but had never had much reason to go further into the subject until the boys exposed my ignorance. In self defense I began to hunt up the names and found it a most interesting hobby. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... 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 ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... man. He never slept over! The prevailin weakness of most public men is to slop over! They git filled up and slop. They Rush Things. They travel too much on the high presser principle. They git onto the fust poplar hobby-hoss which trots along, not caring a cent whether the beest is even goin, clear sited and sound or spavined, blind and bawky. Of course they git throwed eventooualy, if not sooner. When they see the multitood goin it blind they go pel ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... dames, it is not so difficult to create the beautiful, if one has a little taste and great patience. My inn—it has become my hobby, my pride, my wife, my children. Some men marry their art, I espoused my inn. I found her poor, tattered, broken-down, in health, if you will; verily, as your Shakespeare says of some country wench: 'a poor thing but mine own.'" Monsieur ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the sort. It is a hobby of mine never to waste gas or electricity, and I remember distinctly stopping to put out the light after I had ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... 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 poison because it ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... 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 of this map of Iceland, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... entertain the whole company, nor introduce a topic in which he only is interested or informed. The more serious questions of life are barred in society; people wish to be amused, not instructed. An inveterate talker, especially one of a didactic turn, is a bore. So is the man who puts a hobby through its paces. Avoid exaggerations in conversation, also extravagances, such as "beastly this" or "awfully that," also avoid over emphasis. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Bowery boy doggedly, securely mounted now on his favorite hobby horse. "I knows, and youse knows, Mr. Chames. Gee, I wish I'd bin a cop. But I wasn't tall enough. Dey's de fellers wit' de long green in der banks. Look at dis old McEachern. Money to boin a wet dog wit', he's got, and never a bit of woik for it from de start to de ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... after the involuntary bath, except one of the Indians, who was affected with a kind of ophthalmia. This attack, which Mr. Marcoy attributed partly to the glare, partly to the wet, and partly to a singular hobby peculiar to the individual of sleeping with his eyes wide open, was of no long duration. The pain which he complained of disappeared with a few hours of exercise and with the determination he showed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... so cynically indifferent as Anastasie, and who sometimes put him on his mettle by the most relevant objections. Besides, was he not educating the boy? And education, philosophers are agreed, is the most philosophical of duties. What can be more heavenly to poor mankind than to have one's hobby grow into a duty to the State? Then, indeed, do the ways of life become ways of pleasantness. Never had the Doctor seen reason to be more content with his endowments. Philosophy flowed smoothly from his lips. He was so agile a dialectician that ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Holmes, standing at the corner and glancing along the line, "I should like just to remember the order of the houses here. It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London. There is Mortimer's, the tobacconist, the little newspaper shop, the Coburg branch of the City and Suburban Bank, the Vegetarian Restaurant, and McFarlane's ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... lofty; always either amusing or touching; and—most important— himself passionately addicted to literature. You cannot like Lamb without liking literature in general. And you cannot read Lamb without learning about literature in general; for books were his hobby, and he was a critic of the first rank. His letters are full of literariness. You will naturally read his letters; you should not only be infinitely diverted by them (there are no better epistles), but you should receive from them much light on ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... a little hobby horse, And it was dapple grey; Its head was made of pea-straw, Its tail was made of hay. I sold it to an old woman For a copper groat; And I'll not sing my song again ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... forced a good many helpful ideas into pretty Huldah's somewhat empty pate, though it by no means cured her of all her superstitions. She continued to keep a record of Saturday weather, and it proved as interesting and harmless a hobby as the ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... such things, everybody would have one in the country." He not only knew everybody in Paris, but he possessed an extraordinary faculty of drawing people out, and forcing them to make themselves amusing. No man was in his society long before he discovered himself openly discussing his most cherished hobby, or airily scattering as seed for trivial conversation the fruit of long years of experience and reflection. His hotel in the Rue de Varenne was the resort of all that was most remarkable and extraordinary ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... predecessors. He sat in a cellar of the old prison, with walls of sandbags on each side of him, but he could not sit there very long at a stretch, because it was his duty to regulate the traffic according to the shell-fire. He kept a visitors' book as a hobby, until it was buried under piles of prison, and was a hearty, cheerful soul, in spite of the menace of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... writers would fortify him in this notion, and thus deflect him from the truth, while those of another, and, in my opinion, a wiser school, would deny to a drain, however foul, the power of generating de novo a specific disease. After close enquiry he recollected that a hobby-horse had been used both by his boy and another, who, a short time previously, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... enticed. And Janet, piqued, said, "If that's all, I'll have him here in a week." They were an adventurous family, always ready for anything, always on the look-out for new sources of pleasure, full of zest in life. They liked novelties, and hospitality was their chief hobby. They made fun of nearly every body, but ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the best shots in the army, his military hobby in fact being musketry, though he was also a great authority on the subject of mounted infantry. He was a keen sportsman, an excellent linguist. He was highly respected by all who knew him. As an evidence of how he was regarded by his brother officers, one may quote from the telegram which was ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... years at lectures had not been passed in vain, and surgery had been my hobby. I knelt and strove to aid him. It was a cruel wound. I asked for bandages. She tore them from her garments wildly. I stilled the trickling crimson stream, and going into the tent, found some restoratives. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... manfully, helping his brother to cut off the abundant plumes, tying them up in loose bundles with the quill ends level, that they might dry, and carefully carrying them into the room used for storing feathers, eggs, and such curiosities as were collected from time to time; Dyke having displayed a hobby for bringing home stones, crystals, birds' eggs, and any attractive piece of ore, that he found during his travels. These were ranged in an old case, standing upright against the corrugated iron wall, where, a few boardings nailed across ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... descriptions of an existence which seemed hardly worth the living. But each letter had terminated with a prayer, remarkably near to a command, that he, Paul Howard Alexis, should remain in England. So Paul stayed in London, where he indulged to the full a sadly mistaken hobby. This man had, as we have seen, that which is called a crank, or a loose screw, according to the fancy of the speaker. He had conceived the absurd idea of benefiting his fellow-beings, and of turning into that mistaken channel the surplus wealth that was his. This, moreover, if it please ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... her it was not Sam who was with him, but Marchant. They had been to see Sobieski about a place Captain Chunn had secured for him as a night watchman of the shipbuilding plant of which Clinton Rogers was part owner. The Pole had mounted his hobby and it had been late when they got away from his cabin under ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... the apprehension of a prisoner awaiting a verdict; the nauseating sensation of one who sees death facing him, with the chances a thousand to one against him. A half-plaited rawhide rope was lying in his lap; the hobby of making these his sister had persuaded him to turn to profitable account. He was expert in their manufacture, and found a ready market for his ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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
... can easily be found in other ways without inflicting the fear, distress, and pain which the hunted animals endure. It is a sad commentary on the stage at which humanity still is that even royalty, to whom we look for virtuous examples, seldom misses an opportunity to hunt. When a man has a strong hobby he is unable to see its evil side even though in other respects he may be humane and kind-hearted. Thus the sorry spectacle is presented of highly civilized and humane people displaying their courage by hunting and attacking ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... other by the spirit of commercialism from the North—and from Europe, too—those abuses could have been eliminated, and the institution developed in the direction of the mild patriarchalism of the divine intention." The Colonel hitched his chair, which figured a hobby careering upon its hind legs, a little toward Mrs. Leighton and the girls approached their heads and began to whisper; they fell deferentially silent when the Colonel paused in his argument, and went on again when ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a little, till he saw how little I was enjoying it. Then he rotted the orator on his lordly oblivion of one fact. Were there not limits to his experience of Africa? He himself avowed his sympathies with the African. If he had a hobby, it was natives. He wanted to win their trust for a great many reasons. It was worth while having it. He told a certain story and the talk diverged. It was quite sympathetic talk, from my point of view thenceforward, up till bed-time. We ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... prized the trout like precious jewels. John and James Ellison, Farmer Ellison's sons, and Benjamin, their cousin, fished the pool once in a great while—and got soundly trounced if caught. It was Farmer Ellison's hobby, this pool and its fish. He gloated over them like a miser. He watched them leap, and counted them when they did, ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... to take poetry quite seriously. His non-satirical verse is full of bright colour, but it has the brightness, not of the fields and the flowers, but of captive birds in an aviary. It is as though Mr. Sitwell had taken poetry for his hobby. I suspect his Argonauts of being ballet dancers. He enjoys amusing little decorations—phrases such ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... 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, and that it ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... sustained by more than ordinary littleness of mind you will never see threescore and ten. All these things are good in proportion as you have difficulty in finding time for them. When you have to rise early in the morning and work hard to make a little leisure for your favourite hobby, then you are getting its blessing. Now, the Dirzee is not a means of killing time. On the contrary, I see that he compels his mistress to take thought how she may save time alive, if she wishes to get anything done. He hurries the day along and scatters its hours, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... weird sort of way, a hobby is a man's substitute for sport, I believe," said Estelle's father. "Many have no feeling for sport; it's left out of them and they seem to be able to live comfortably without it. Instead they develop an instinct for something else. ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... overpowered with the deadly sense of ennui which comes of the intuition that nothing in the least interesting is to be looked for, but only a series of wearisome utterances of the kind which are apt to fall from the lips of a man whose hobby has once been touched upon. For every man HAS his hobby. One man's may be sporting dogs; another man's may be that of believing himself to be a lover of music, and able to sound the art to its inmost depths; another's ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... good conversation lies in discovering the "hobby" of the person with whom one is conversing, and a good talker always throws out several "feelers" in order to find out the things in which his partner is most interested. You should, therefore, next say to mother, "Don't you think this is a glorious day for a picnic?" ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... has its physiognomy, and everybody who has been accustomed to a large correspondence knows how instinctively and unfailingly he recognises a caligraphy which has been presented to him only twice or thrice. It was as a result of my pursuit of this hobby that I first began to take a real interest in the Dreyfus case. When the first rough and ready facsimiles of the famous Bordereau and of the authentic letters of Captain Dreyfus were published side by side, it struck me with an immediate ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... advice, got on the moral hobby again, and had the assurance to auscultate. Their imagination began to ferment. They wrote to the king, in order that there might be established in Calvados an institute of nurses for the sick, of which ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... return to the same civil pursuits side by side; every officer knows that in a little while each soldier will again become his client or his customer, his constituent or his rival. Shall he risk offending him for life in order to carry out some hobby of stricter discipline? If this difficulty exist in the case of commissioned officers, it is still more the case with the non-commissioned, those essential intermediate links in the chain of authority. Hence the discipline of our soldiers has been generally ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... a moment. "I've always wanted one of them to marry a preacher," he said, laughing apologetically. "It is very narrow-minded, of course, but a man does make a hobby of his own profession. I always hoped Prudence would. I thought she was born for it. Then I looked to Fairy, and she turned me down. I guess I'll have to give ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... to your secretary a few minutes in the hotel lobby this morning and he told me that while some of you were in the nut business with a majority of you it was a hobby. That is the altruistic spirit that counts in these days when most of us look upon things ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... was in agitation; all their fears about the unsettled state of his mind were revived with tenfold force; they hung about him, entreating him not to expose himself to the night air, but all in vain. When once Wolfert was mounted on his hobby,[1] it was no easy manner to get him out of the saddle. It was a clear, starlight night when he issued out of the portal of the Webber palace. He wore a large flapped hat, tied under the chin with a ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... the black races in Rhodesia; but if they sought enlightenment they were disappointed. No one knew anything about Major Carew, except that he was once in the Blues and now in the British South Africa police, and that the natives were more or less his hobby. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... Aikens says. The theory is good, but they are afraid the expense will make it of no practical use. However, they have not decided. It is well it is his last chance, though, as he says. I never saw a man who had dragged himself so near to insanity in pursuit of a hobby. Nothing but a great reaction ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... not 'go' with the Chippendale furniture, and Vera said that all beautiful things 'went' together, and Cheswardine admitted that they did, rather dryly. You see, they took the matter seriously because the house was their hobby; they were always changing its interior, which was more than they could have done for a child, even if they had had one; and Cheswardine's finer and soberer taste was always fighting against Vera's predilection for the novel and the bizarre. ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... want to, an' if Joe's able to do them to-day. I think he'll do 'em all right, providin' he doesn't git side-tracked on his hobby." ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... is 129 miles from London, and is a pretty town on the skirts of Derbyshire. This place is remarkable, or was lately, for a sport on New Year's Day and Twelfth Day, called The Hobby-Horse Dance, from a person who rode upon the image of a horse, with a bow and arrow in his hands, with which he made a snapping noise, and kept time to the music, while six men danced the hay and other country dances, with as many deer's heads on their shoulders. To this hobby-horse ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... when the cares of life, Have set my temples aching, When visions haunt me of a wife, When duns await my waking, When Lady Jane is in a pet, Or Hobby in a hurry, When Captain Hazard wins a bet, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton |
