"Avocation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was formed in the '70s by newspaper writers and men working in the arts or interested in them. It had grown to a membership of 750. It still kept for its nucleus painters, writers, musicians and actors, amateur and professional. They were a gay group of men, and hospitality was their avocation. Yet the thing which set this club off from all others in the world ...
— The City That Was - A Requiem of Old San Francisco • Will Irwin
... in their peculiar fashion unequalled. Here blooms a cluster of beautiful flowers, covered as it were by a glass shade, but which turns out to be only water. There a miniature palace is in course of erection, with crowds of workmen in its different storeys, each man at his avocation with hammer and chisel, pulley and wheel, and the grave architect himself directing their labour. All this is set in motion by water, and is not a mere doll's house, but a symmetrical model. Then we enter a subterranean grotto, with a roof of pendant stalactites, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... Treasury Department was given to Thomas Ewing, of Ohio (familiarly known from his early avocation as "the Salt Boiler of the Kanawha") who was physically and intellectually a great man. He was of medium height, very portly, his ruddy complexion setting off his bright, laughing eyes to the best advantage. On "the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... our great country, no Negro permitted to run as engineer on a locomotive, most of the mines closed against us. Labor-unions—carpenters, painters, brick-masons, machinists, hackmen, and those supplying nearly every conceivable avocation for livelihood have banded themselves together to better their condition, but, with few exceptions, the black face has been left out. The Negroes are seldom employed in our mercantile stores. At this we do not wonder. Some day we hope to have them employed ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... people, broadens her interests, increases her usefulness, and, moreover, is often a recreation. The home-maker needs outside interests. The girl at home is never dull, or unhappy because she is dull, when she has an avocation in addition to her work and life in ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... of ships, and thus naturally was still more developed the race of Deal boatmen, who were, and are to the present time, daily accustomed to launch and land through the surf which runs in rough weather on their open beach; and whose avocation was to pilot the vessels anchoring in or leaving the Downs, and to help those in distress on ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... “of the cloth” with piscatorial proclivities, who visit Woodhall, the writer would point to this means of healthful relaxation, which he can recommend from experience. Any qualms of the clerical conscience as to the legitimacy of such an avocation—a wholesome calling away from graver duties—may be set at rest on episcopal, and even archi-episcopal, authority. The late Archbishop Magee was an ardent fisherman, and would go on flogging on Irish lough or river, even though he did not get a single rise. (See “Life ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... I could scarce see a bit of the old wood. She was of unspeakable use to me, and yet I could not venture myself in her, but with the utmost apprehension and trembling. I had been intending a good while, now I had such helps, to build a new one, but had been diverted by one avocation or other. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... her name. Vocation, school-teacher. Present avocation, getting lost in the snow. Age, yum-yum (the Persian for twenty). Take to the woods if you would describe Miss Adams. A willow for grace; a hickory for fibre; a birch for the clear whiteness of her skin; for eyes, the blue sky seen through treetops; the silk ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... of probation taught him his trade, they taught him also a most unfortunate avocation or by-trade, which he never ceased to practise, or to try to practise, which never did him the least good, and which not unfrequently lost him much of the not too abundant gains which he earned with such enormous labor. This was the "game of speculation." ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... accustomed place at home and at the store as naturally as if he had been away only for a day. The news of his return drew around him many of the motley ilk who made trading and swapping both a business and an avocation. They seldom dealt with him, to be sure, but it was a liberal education to hear his experiences, and even better to see him actually make a deal. On his first day at home he had bought a lame horse for the small sum of fifty dollars, after he ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... Johnsoniana that flooded the market. Courtenay's literary output, though scanty, was diverse; he wrote light verse, character sketches, and essays, including two controversial pieces in support of the French Revolution.[1] It is apparent, however, that for him writing was hardly more than an avocation. ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... for all four, the walk down the mountain road; and the pedestrians enjoyed the scenery all the more with intelligent guides to point out places of interest. The old schoolteacher, having questioned Wilkinson as to his avocation, looked upon him as a superior being, and gratified the little corner of good-natured vanity that lies in most teachers' hearts. Coristine told the wife that he trusted her daughters had good places, where they would receive ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... and which is given us, as of course, by the division of labor.(376) Yet the skill produced by the division of labor is unavoidably connected with a corresponding one-sidedness. The Russians, for instance, are exceedingly apt, but they rarely distinguish themselves in any thing.(377) Love of his avocation, or pride in it, is a thing unknown to the Russian workman. He shirks all continuous labor.(378) Experience has shown that the Neapolitans and Italians, in general, exhibit great skill when they work alone; but that when a great many of them work together, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... letter-writing, it was by no means the same in those other functions which have been just referred to. In later years (it is Mr Humphry Ward, I think, who is our sufficient authority for it) poetry was but occasional amusement and solace to him, prose his regular avocation from task-work; and there is abundant evidence that, willingly or unwillingly, he never allowed either to usurp the place of the vocation which he had accepted. Not everybody, perhaps, is so scrupulous. It is not an absolutely unknown thing to hear men boast of getting through their work ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... a car platform and standing there until the conductor came along, when he would hop off, ride a block or two on the end of a truck, and then try a new car, so beating his way down-town. Then he arrived at his office. I have neglected to state that while invention was Jarley's avocation, he was by profession a lawyer, being the junior member of a highly successful firm, at the head of which was no less a person than the eminent William J. Baker, whose record at the bar is too well known to require any further words of ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... ant show themselves beneath the leaf. So that both the form and the colouring of the homopterous insect has been brought to resemble, with singular exactness, those belonging to a different order of insect, when the latter is engaged in its peculiar avocation. A glance at the figure is enough to show the means employed and the result attained. In A, an ant and its mimic are represented as about 2-1/2 times their natural size, and both proceeding in the same direction. It ought to be mentioned, however, that in reality the margin of the leaf ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... comfortable," why belie ourselves? Malcome's influence is, and always has been, with the whites, and manifestly good in the preservation of order and obedience on the part of the slaves. He pursues his avocation with spirit and enterprise, while he is subjected to menial and oppressive laws. His father visited New York, and was forbidden to return. He appealed again and again, set forth his claims and his integrity to ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... in the earth of the flower bed by the path—"of course," he said, "speaking as one who has had some sad experience with illness and that sort of thing, it has always seemed to me that one should not take chances with one's health. If the cares of a particular avocation—situation—position—whatever it may be—if the cares and—ah—disappointments incidental to it are affecting one's physical condition it has always seemed to me wiser to sacrifice the first for the second. And make the sacrifice in time. You see ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... while you stay. I always hate hosts who talk about their servants—I have a friend who bores me to death because he has a Jap butler he believes was at Mukden. But I think I am justified in calling your attention to ours—Mr. Peters, the Hermit of Baldpate Mountain. Cooking is merely his avocation. He is ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... two words so nearly alike. Vocation is the employment, business or profession one follows for a living; avocation is some pursuit or occupation which diverts the person from such ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... one Willis Hubbard, an automobile agent by profession, lady's man and general Lothario by avocation. His handsome dark face stood out clearly in the dusk. She could see the avid shine in his eyes. She hated him all of a sudden, though hitherto she had secretly rather admired him, though she had always steadily refused ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... fidelity with which I clung to my avocation as an educator also influenced my action in this matter. Even if I could not say truly that I had a Fatherland, I must yet acknowledge that every boy, that every child, who might perhaps later on come to be educated by me would have a Fatherland, that this Fatherland was ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... and impunity I neither arrogate, nor permit in others. Keep cool, Elliott, or else change your profession. A man who cannot hold his temper in leash, and who flies emotional signals from every feature in his face, has slender chance of success in an avocation which demands that body and soul, heart and mind, abjure even secret signal service, and deal only in cipher. The youthful naivete with which you permit your countenance to reflect your sentiments, renders it quite easy ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... introduction of a universal system of National Service, the ultimate aim of which was to ensure that every youth should, by the time that he had reached the age of manhood, twenty-five years, have undergone a course of training, which, without interfering with his civil avocation, would render him a desirable asset as a soldier. With this object in view I submitted ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... in the year of our Lord 1192, a pirate vessel touched land on the coast of Sclavonia, at the port of Yara. Those were days in which it was not easy to distinguish between pirates and true mariners, either in aspect or avocation, neither being afflicted with much inconvenient honesty, both being hungry for spoil. From this vessel were landed a number of passengers,—knights, chaplains, and servants,—Crusaders on their way home from the Holy Land, and in need, for their overland journey, of a ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Seizing upon all that was good offered by the inventors preceding him, he carefully re-proportioned the various parts and produced English clocks and watches that were at once the pride and despair of his brother craftsmen. Watches were something of an avocation with him, for his primary trade was in clocks, to which for many years he devoted his entire labor. Probably, however, the problems a watch presented won his interest and led him to try his skill in ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... of the antecedents of Summerfield. He was of Northern birth, but of what State it is impossible to say definitely. Early in life he removed to the frontier of Arkansas, and pursued for some years the avocation of village schoolmaster. It was the suggestion of Judge Wheeler that induced him to read law. In six months' time he had mastered Story's Equity, and gained an important suit, based upon one of its most recondite principles. But his heart was not in the legal profession, and he ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... had taken, with his motives for it, was far from being offended at it; tho' he told him it added to his trouble, to think his eldest son should be compelled, by his having entered into a second marriage, to have recourse to any avocation whatever for bread; but concluded with telling him, that in the severe necessity of their present circumstances, he could not have pitched on any thing more agreeable to his inclinations, ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... the art-critic is nothing if not a person to be educated, with or against the grain; and when he encounters him in the ways of error, he leaps upon him joyously, scalps him in print before the eyes of men, kicks him gaily back into the paths of truth and soberness, and resumes his avocation with that peculiar zest an act of virtue does undoubtedly impart. Indeed, Mr. Whistler, so far from being the critic's enemy, is on the contrary the best friend that tradesman has ever had. For his function is to ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... felicity in this as well as in the next world. Man must follow the standard of virtue of the good and in his acts imitate the example of the righteous. There are virtuous men, versed in holy writ and learned in all departments of knowledge. Man's proper duty consists in following his own proper avocation, and this being the case these latter do not become confused and mixed up. The wise man delights in virtue and lives by righteousness. And, O good Brahmana, such a man with the wealth of righteousness which he hereby acquires, waters the root of the plant ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... a big subject that must be treated broadly, for circumstances alter cases. There is a sane way to look at every problem, and the matter of living beyond our means is one of the major problems we have to face. If every man was alike and every avocation in life was on a parity, it would be possible to dispose of this subject in a paragraph. But men are not alike. What one could do successfully might easily baffle another. Therefore, it seems advisable to consider the subject by ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... pulpit, in the medical profession, and especially in political life, tact is the sine qua non to the highest degree of individual success. However gifted one may be, he cannot win conspicuous laurels in any calling or avocation, if he be deficient in tactfulness. The man who best understands human nature, knows how to approach people, and possesses the art of leading them, is the one who will invariably have the largest following and will possess the greatest ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... herald should go before, and proclaim with a loud voice, Hoc age, Do this you are about, and so warn them to mind whatever sacred action they were engaged in, and not suffer any business or worldly avocation to disturb and interrupt it; most of the things which men do of this kind, being in a manner forced from them, and effected by constraint. It is usual with the Romans to recommence their sacrifices and processions and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... tide without knowing it. And even now things were not much better, but still he had a fighting chance to make himself amount to something. He could write, and he would work at it as a man must work at his calling. He could play the violin, and he would make it his avocation and refreshment. She was going on, he knew, to win a great success. He would rejoice in it—he loved her with all his heart—she must know that—but he had nothing to offer her. He was too poor to ask ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... produce the case-bottles for the discussion of the said A1, with the dark lantern, who gained considerably in the good opinion of Mr. James Pipkin, by requesting the favour of his company in the bibacious avocation he so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... opportunity to say that observation has convinced me that all good and true book-lovers practise the pleasing and improving avocation of reading in bed. Indeed, I fully believe with Judge Methuen that no book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over. You recall, perhaps, that eloquent passage in his noble defence of the poet Archias, wherein Cicero (not ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... an open fireplace, and a pair of plain but easy chairs. Upon a strong tremorless table placed near the one great window, a huge lump of clay, swathed in damp cloths, alone served to denote the occupant's avocation. ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... person has the long end of it. I never was thin, so I don't know. However, I have been fat—notice that "have been"? And if there is any phase of human enjoyment, any part of life, any occupation, avocation, divertisement, pleasure or pain where the fat man has the better of it in any regard, I failed to discover it in the twenty years during which I looked like the rear end of a hack and had all the bodily characteristics ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... printed and spoken about drinking liquor than about any other employment, avocation, vocation, habit, practice or pleasure of mankind. Drinking liquor is a personal proposition, and nothing else. It is individual in every human relation. Still, you cannot make the reformers see that. They want other people to stop drinking because they want other people to stop. So they make laws ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe
... face and solve as many difficult problems as the civilised European in his different surroundings. That these problems are made up of elements differing from those that constitute the problems of the civilised man in his daily avocation proves only a difference of content, not of difficulty. The mental strain involved in leading the so-called simple life of the so-called savage is, on the whole, no less intense than that suffered by the civilised man in maintaining his civilised ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... Revolution, the Napoleonic occupation of Rome, the brilliant essays of liberalism of Pius IX., the Republic, the siege of Rome, the reactionary government of late years, have alike supplied matter for Master Pasquin, which he has shaped according to the fashion of the times. He still pursues his ancient avocation. Res acu tetigit. But the point of the needle is not the means by which the rents in the garment of Rome are to be mended,—much less by which her wounds are to be cauterized and healed. The sharp satiric tongue may prick her moral sense into restlessness, but the Roman spirit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sometimes stood or squatted upon the bank; at other times, not content with commanding the mere edge of the water, he plunged in, and is seen mid-stream, astride upon an inflated skin, quietly pursuing his avocation. [PLATE CXXVI., Fig. 1.] Occasionally he improved his position by amounting upon a raft, and, seated at the stern, with his back to the rower, threw out his line and drew the fish from the water. Now and then the fisherman was provided ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... end of the campaign, however, the army speedily dispersed, each man returning to his former avocation; save therefore for the retainers, who formed the garrisons of the castles of the nobles, there was no military career such as that which came into existence with the formation of standing armies. Nevertheless, there was honour and rank to be won in the foreign ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... wrapped, leant over the railing and listened; and opposite the nympham discentem there was a capering and acute-eared young satirist of a crossing-sweeper, who had left his neighboring professional avocation and chance of profit, in order to listen to the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... nature of whose avocation I never thought it necessary to inquire into, was a sea cook on board a Peninsular and Oriental steamer. His profession thus prevented him from being a permanent resident in this, or indeed in any ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... of a growing attention to interest, or of effeminacy, contracted in the enjoyment of ease and conveniency. Every successive art, by which the individual is taught to improve on his fortune, is, in reality, an addition to his private engagements, and a new avocation of his mind ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... and bends in the river, stretched out their huge sails athwart the horizon, and seemingly looked defiance at us as invading strangers, that were from a land where steam or water mills monopolize their avocation of flour making. One morning as we passed down the principal high road, on our way to Lower Fort Garry, the wind, after a protracted calm, began to blow a little; when presto! each mill veered around its sails to catch the propitious breeze, ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... only a poor shoeblack-boy who cleaned boots—ay, and even shoes, for his daily bread. Such time as he could spare from his avocation he devoted to diligent study of the doctrine of chance, as exemplified in the practice of pitch-and-toss. Often and often, after pitching and tossing in the cold wet streets for long weary hours, he would return home without a halfpenny. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... learned full many tricks In his strange avocation; He knew the figures were but six In this, her combination; Nor did we for a minute rest Until ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... summit of laudable ambitions into the sultry plains of domestic drudgery and menial toil, nearly every ray of hope had perished upon the strained vision of the Negro. The only thing young Colored men could aspire to was the position of a waiter, the avocation of a barber, the place of a house-servant or groom, and teach or preach to their own people with little or no qualifications. Denied the opportunities and facilities of securing an education, they were upbraided by the press and pulpit, in ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... hope that you may be able to take up this most fascinating avocation with pleasure and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... standards but stars by which to steer the direction of our course over the tempestuous sea of time? Everyone who guides his life in connection with reason guides it by means of some norm or other. Even the daily avocation requires this in order to be fulfilled. And the norms which furnish guidance to the spiritual life have originated and are utilised in precisely the same manner as those of the daily avocation. The only ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... he; "but I think we may form a pretty shrewd guess as to his avocation. As you saw, the words 'Herrn Dr.' were printed on the envelope, leaving the rest of the address to be written by hand. The plain inference is that he is a person who habitually addresses letters to medical ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... discomfited by the necessity of sneezing before servants. Anywhere else in the world, of course, such a pose would not have been convincing. But your Brazilian not only adopts fazenda fita as his own avocation, but also suspects it to be everybody else's too. And a young Brazilian of the leisure class would be horribly annoyed at being forced to so plebeian ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... starving. Such a picture, if drawn by a foreigner, would arouse English indignation from shore to shore; but it is home-drawn. The only foreign delineation is in the author's Jehoiachin Settle, a stage Yankee, whose avocation is planting English children in Canada after the manner of Miss Rye. Settle is a preposterous failure, but every other limb of the writer's argument ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... the explanations of the pictures, and in a little while they were lost. Nothing would satisfy them short of making a complete translation. It became an obsession; it was at first their recreation; then because it went very slowly it seemed likely to become their life avocation. ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... patronized; no prospective mother has the right to sacrifice herself to pride. Music, the various arts, a systematic course of reading, the acquisition of a foreign language—all these are commendable forms of diversion, and others will occur to anyone. Obviously the avocation will be most happily chosen if it directs the attention into channels likely to lead ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... left the side of the mistico, she had, in every respect, the appearance of one belonging to a harmless fisherman just returned from his day's avocation. Although Zappa had with justice full confidence in his own masquerading talents, he wisely did not wish to run any unnecessary risk, and he, therefore, ordered the mistico to get under weigh, and to sweep close in shore after him, that he might, in case of necessity, have some support at hand; ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Grange store—just as they had idled on boxes before the war. They were the same men, it was the same store, and it was not inconceivable that they were the same boxes. As the men idled they spat, somewhat to the menace of the passers-by, though in defence of this avocation it may be argued that any truly agile person, by watching carefully and seizing opportunity unhesitatingly, could get by undefiled. Sometimes a vehicle rolled into the street toward the Square, and when this happened it was amusement to the ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... you do for a living, an avocation something you do for a while, a vacation something you couldn't stick at very long without being dead broke ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... of my then ambition was to keep a fried-fish shop. The restaurateur with whom my good mother dealt used to sit for hours in his doorway in Drury Lane reading a book, and I considered this a most dignified and scholarly avocation. When I made this naive avowal to Paragot, he looked at me with a queer pity in his eyes, and muttered an exclamation in a foreign tongue. I have never met anyone so full of strange oaths as Paragot. As to my religious convictions, they were chiefly limited ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Almacks, and the author has so well succeeded in describing the cold selfish fopperies of the time, that the copy is almost as dull as the original. I think I will take up my bundle of Sheriff-Court processes instead of Almacks, as the more entertaining avocation of the two. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... not reside among the palatial residences of the Queen City. A rather restricted income compelled him to find a more unpretentious home than was perhaps in keeping with his avocation and position in life. Yet, carrying into practice the teaching he set forth, to "owe no man anything," and never live beyond one's income, he established his home in a portion of the city that was rather characterized by low rents than aristocratic abodes. However, they ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... their particular grounds. In one department of industry or another, they had been nearly incessant ever since the great business crisis of 1873. In fact it had come to be the exceptional thing to see any class of laborers pursue their avocation steadily for more than a ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... patient pursued his avocation of a stone-mason; no further remedy was required; no inconvenience experienced; and the eschar separated in about ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... provinces, so industrious and energetic, the disgust was likely to be most easily awakened for a system under which so many friars battened in luxury upon the toils of others, contributing nothing to the taxation, nor to the military defence of the country, exercising no productive avocation, except their trade in indulgences, and squandering in taverns and brothels the annual sums derived from their traffic in licences to commit murder, incest, and every other crime ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and those who had fallen upon "gringoes" in the region had despatched their victims thoroughly, leaving them mutilated and robbed even of their clothing. The charming part of it all was one could never know which of these slinking fellows was a bandit by avocation and saving up his unvented anger for the boss who ordered him ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... brilliant and altogether remarkable little picture by John Sargent, entitled "The Hermit" (Pl. 21). Mr. Sargent is a portrait-painter by vocation, and the public knows him best as a penetrating and sometimes cruel reader of human character. He is a mural painter by avocation and capable, on occasion, of a monumental formality. In this picture, as in the wonderful collection of watercolors in the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, one fancies one sees the essential John Sargent, working for himself alone without ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... close of his career, he was so, even then, only fitfully and at the rarest intervals. Precisely in the same way, it may be remarked, in regard to those who watched his whole course as a Reader, that so facile and so pleasureable to himself, as well as to them, appeared to be the novel avocation which had come of late years to be alternated with his more accustomed toil as an author, that it rendered even the most observant amongst them unconscious in their turn of the disastrously exhausting influence of this unnatural blending together ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... considerable part of his prospective fortune was invested in the admirable shares of the Birmingham, Sheffield and District Bank, and it pleased him to sit on a stool in the Bursley branch of this bank, since he wanted, pro tempore, a dignified avocation without either the anxieties of trade or the competitive tests of a profession. He was a beautiful bank clerk; but he had once thrown a bundle of cheques into the office fire while aiming at a basket on the mantelpiece; the whole banking world would ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... there be any class of persons to whom India tea is more particularly hurtful than to any other, it is that which includes the studious and sedentary, and especially those who are enfeebled with gout, stone, and rheumatism; age, accident, or avocation, cause many persons to be unfortunately ranked amongst those of the latter description. These, from their intensity of thought, want of exercise, injurious position of body, respiration of unwholesome air, and a variety of other ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... Tuck was an old Yale man and that his avocation in life seemed to be tennis. The engineers had a good court in the woods and after Tuck found that Jim liked the game, he took the boy over to the court every afternoon before supper and beat him with monotonous regularity. And ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... civilisation is to obliterate those distinctions which are the best salt of life. All the fine old professional flavour in language has evaporated. Your very gravedigger has forgotten his avocation in his electorship, and would quibble on the Franchise over Ophelia's grave, instead of more appropriately discussing the duration of bodies under ground. From this tendency, from this gradual attrition of life, in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to be pleasures in madness known only to madmen. There are certainly miseries in idleness, which the Idler only can conceive. These miseries I have often felt and often bewailed. I know by experience, how welcome is every avocation that summons the thoughts to a new image; and how much languor and lassitude are relieved by that officiousness which offers a momentary amusement to him who is unable to find ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Crawley's husband?" Lord Steyne used to say to him by way of a good day when they met; and indeed that was now his avocation in life. He was Colonel Crawley no more. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... live in a perpetual avocation of thought. To perceive God in His works a man must, at least, consider them with attention. But passions cast such a mist before the eyes, not only of wild savages, but even of nations that seem to be most civilised and polite, that they do not so much as see the light that lights them. ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... get through their business training, or apprenticeship, instead of pursuing their avocation and rising in their business, will often lie about doing nothing. They say; "I have learned my business, but I am not going to be a hireling; what is the object of learning my trade or ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... this excellent treatise the author endeavours to show, that the complaint of the shortness of life is not founded in truth: that it is men who make life short, either by passing it in indolence, or otherwise improperly. He inveighs against indolence, luxury, and every unprofitable avocation; observing, that the best use of time is to apply it to the study of wisdom, by which life may be rendered ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... apparently unmoved by the honors that clustered around his name, pursued his humble avocation with pride and pleasure—with pride, because he had been successful by his own unaided exertions; with pleasure, because he was actually relieving his mother from the entire burden of supporting the family. Since the rescue of Carrie, perch, ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... propensities of our nature? It is true, these propensities may by an undue cultivation be so much increased, as to be productive of the most extensive mischief. The man who, for the sake of indulging his corporeal appetites, neglects every valuable pursuit, and every important avocation, cannot be too warmly censured. But it is no less true, that the passion of the sexes for each other, exists in the most innocent and uncorrupted heart. Can it then be reasonable to condemn such a moderate indulgence of this passion, as interrupts no employment, and impedes no pursuit? ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... avocation, dissertation, or intellectual recreation can you cease at will? Not bridge—you go on playing to win. Not public speaking—they ring a bell. Not mere converse—you have to answer everything the other insufficient person says. Not life, for it is wrong to ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... duel by libel, the libel being enforced apparently by its strict truth. Some of M. Thiers's political antagonists, seeking to annoy him, volunteered to circulate in the form of a card the following advertisement for a lady who appears to be related to M. Thiers, and also to carry on an honest avocation:— ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... The earliest avocation of our colonies was that of agriculture; and before 1776 our agricultural industries, owing to the discoveries which had gradually been made as to the capabilities of the then settled districts, had grown to important ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... the altar richly drest, and the bells ringing as they are wont to do upon great festivals, at eight in the morning there assembled in the Church all the brethren of the Monastery, nineteen in number, the other fifteen being absent each in his avocation; and there were present with them Sancho de Ocaa, Merino and Chief Justice of the Monastery; Juan de Rosales, Pedro de Ruseras, and Juan Ruyz, squires of the house; master Ochoa de Artiaga, a mason, with his men; Andres de ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... facility in the arrangement and expression of thoughts, in her avocation of translator, and compiler, which was no doubt of great use to her afterward. It was not long until she had occasion for them. The eminent Burke produced his celebrated "Reflections on the Revolution in France." ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... it is recorded: "April the 28th day, Old John Seagle departed this world, 1780." On page 11 this entry appears: "May the 3rd day I sowed flax seed in the year 1779," and other entries relating to the same agricultural avocation are interspersed through the little book. The culture of flax was then an indispensible employment. Our soldiers then wore hunting shirts, made of flax, to the battle fields. Cotton was not generally cultivated ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... 12,500 Yugoslavs and extremely few Italianists; and, by the way, to show how the Magyars and the Italianists worked together, it is worth mentioning that the Magyar railway officials who lived at Su[vs]ak were allowed a vote at Rieka, while if a Croat lived at Su[vs]ak and carried on his avocation at Rieka he could vote in Su[vs]ak only. One must not imagine that Su[vs]ak is a poor relation; most people would prefer to live there. Dr. Vio was intensely wrathful because the British General resided in a beautifully situated house there by the sea. Not only is Su[vs]ak about twenty ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... football team, and I made it—by hard work, with a hundred other fellows doing their best to push me back on the side lines; I tried for the crew, and I made it; I rowed two years at New London, and there was some work about that. I'm afraid I made athletics my vocation and studies my avocation, but I tried to do what I undertook as well as I knew how, and some of the boys still think I'm pretty good ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... a common saying with business men that it is hard to find a man of absolute integrity, one who even measures up to the standards of commercial honour among those who are religious, either by vocation or avocation. At any rate, it is true that a certificate of religious affiliations by no means is equivalent to a guarantee ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... of a Saint's day brought Samuel an opportunity to inaugurate his new policy. The foreign colony was rigidly devoted to its religious duties. Nothing could induce a Galician to engage in his ordinary avocation upon any day set apart as sacred by his Church. In the morning such of the colony as adhered to the Greek Church, went en masse to the quaint little church which had come to be erected and which had been consecrated by a travelling Archbishop, and there with reverent devotion ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... observation by the depth to which he had laboured. After a moment's pause, the cavalier cautiously approached the brink, and beheld a strange-looking being, with sleeves tucked up to the shoulders, busily engaged in this interesting and useful avocation. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... faculties of the soul, which are almost constantly, though not always warily nor wisely employed, would not know how to move, for want of a foundation and footing, in most men, who through laziness or avocation do not, or for want of time, or true helps, or for other causes, cannot penetrate into the principles of knowledge, and trace truth to its fountain and original, it is natural for them, and almost unavoidable, to take up with some borrowed principles; which being reputed and presumed to be the ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... the ground, and muse along the odoriferous furrows of our low lands, uninterrupted either by stones or stumps; it is there that the salubrious effluvia of the earth animate our spirits and serve to inspire us; every other avocation of our farms are severe labours compared to this pleasing occupation: of all the tasks which mine imposes on me ploughing is the most agreeable, because I can think as I work; my mind is at leisure; my labour flows from instinct, as well as that of my horses; there is no kind of difference ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... been given them by some of the more respectable loyalists of the town. On the morrow, therefore, the rabble of the town again sounded the cry of "Church and King," and being joined by the rabble of the mining and foundery districts in the neighbourhood, they resumed their dreadful avocation. On that day the houses of Messrs. John Ryland, Taylor, and Hutton, were destroyed; the magistrates making no effectual preparations to stop the ravages. It does not appear that the mob had been furnished with any drink on this day by the loyalist ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... glass of porter from the public-house, for his meal, recounting the feasts of the great as if h had been present at them; and in tattered trousers and dingy shirt-sleeves, cheerfully describing and arranging the most brilliant fetes of the world of fashion. The incongruity of Finucane's avocation, and his manners and appearance amused his new friend Pen. Since he left his own native village, where his rank probably was not very, lofty Jack had seldom seen any society but such as used the parlour of the taverns which he frequented, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... listening to every sound that reached me from without. In about half an hour after he had left me, I heard the hoof-strokes of a horse, and saw the shadow of a horseman passing outside the window. He had departed on his journey, doubtless on the performance of some red duty connected with his fearful avocation! ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... in time to quell the poor girl's fears, and paid her debts; mind and body were set at rest, and, one or two Christian ladies being made acquainted with the case, attended to the comforts which hastened her recovery; and, when once more pursuing her avocation, her "mither's God" seemed very near, ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... occupation," said Flint. "It's an avocation, and it isn't silly. Any one of us would enjoy it, if he weren't so self-conscious. And it's more picturesque than golf and takes more skill. And what courtesy! These men form what is really a club—a club in its primitive and true ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... and cuddle the little one with even as great a show of affection as Teeka herself displayed? Their fears were allayed and Tarzan now found himself often in the role of nursemaid to a tiny anthropoid—an avocation which he found by no means irksome, since Gazan was a never-failing fount ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... out upwards of one hundred pounds to this country. With more wisdom than is generally exercised by Irish emigrants, instead of sinking all his means in buying a bush farm, he hired a very good farm in Cavan, with cattle, and returned to his old avocation. The services of his daughter, who was an excellent dairymaid, were required to take the management of the cows; and her brother brought a wagon and horses all the way from the front to take ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... have known better, but who have become careless from association with others who make constant use of them. "Because that" and "but that" should never be used in connection, the word "that" being entirely superfluous. The word "vocation" is often used for "avocation." "Unhealthy" food is spoken of when it should be "unwholesome." "Had not ought to" is sometimes heard for "ought not to;" "banister" for "baluster;" "handsful" and "spoonsful" for "handfuls" and "spoonfuls;" "it was him" for "it was he;" "it was me" for "it was I;" "whom do you ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... Unfortunately many dabblers in knowledge undervalue the difficulty of writing text-books because they think that they are called upon to aid in the spread of science, and because the writing of compendiums has thus come to be an avocation, so that authors and publishers have made out of text-books a profitable business and good incomes. In all sciences and arts there exists a quantity of material which is common property, which is disposed of now in one way, now in another. The majority of compendiums can be distinguished ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... relative respectability of the various professions is not quite the same as it is with us. There the profession does not disqualify if the man himself be right, nor the claim to the title of gentleman depend upon the avocation followed. I know of one or two clowns in the ring who are educated physicians, and not thought to be any the less gentlemen because they propound conundrums and perpetrate jests instead of prescribing ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... of society; and the object of the members is to establish a republican form of government within their city. They are largely merchants or artisans; but they concern themselves with wider interests than those of trade, and often insist that no man, of whatever avocation, shall remain in the city unless he ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... transportation, and manufacture, employment to millions, feeding and clothing half of Europe—increasing beyond example commercial tonnage, and stimulating the invention of labor-saving machinery—giving a healthy impulse to labor and enterprise in every avocation, and intertwining itself with every interest, throughout the broad expanse of civilization over the earth. To cotton, more than to any other one thing, is due the railroad, steamboat, and steamship, the increase of commerce, the rapid ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... domesticity of this common board had never before seemed so hopelessly displayed. And Tom, the waiter, his napkin twisted in his hand and his face turned with a sudden dark abstraction towards the window, appeared to be really "lying low," and waiting for something outside his avocation. ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... found true farmer-authors, such as Alfred Huggenberger, who still guides the plow across his fields, or poets who have risen from the ranks of handicraftsmen, such as Jakob Schaffner, or those who prosecute their literary avocation side by side with the business of a restaurateur, like Ernst Zahn. And no other of the compatriots of Pestalozzi (J. C. Heer, Heinrich Federer, Meinrad Lienert, Felix Moeschlin) disdains either, to be in the truest sense ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... had a good final look at the old man, who wore more the aspect of a rough fisherman than a gardener. In fact he had pursued the former avocation entirely in the past, in company with the speculative growing of fruit and vegetables in his garden patch—not to sell to his neighbours, the fishing folk of the tiny hamlet of Eilygugg, but to "swap" them, as he termed it, ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... his mother engaged in knitting, as usual. This was the only avocation that her almost complete blindness allowed her to pursue; and she followed it constantly. "Ah! here you are, Toto," she exclaimed, joyously. "I didn't expect you so soon. Don't you scent a savory smell? As ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... rapidity and profusion, and flourishes where precept would utterly perish. Its impression is so indelible, that the greatest difficulty is experienced when attempting to eradicate it. The salutary influence which good example propagates, we find stamped on every avocation in life. In some people a heinous negligence, and in others a culpable apathy is evinced with respect to the principles their conduct is implanting. Profuse illustrations abound in every profession, calling, and trade, of the effect of evil example, and also of the disregard paid to its consequences. ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... good stock, she was born in a workhouse. When old enough, she had entered the service of a kind widow, who travelled with small merchandise. After the death of her mistress, Isopel carried on the same avocation. Being friendless, and falling in with the Flaming Tinman and his wife, she had associated with them, yet acknowledged that she had found them to be ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... themselves, even change their very nature in accomplishing a work which is laid upon them as a duty. One of the greatest artists of New England took care of his brothers and sisters and his father's farm, at a crisis, and kept a little shed outside the house where he painted at odd moments. He had an avocation as well as a vocation. He gave up his trip to study in Europe as he wished to study; he did a vast amount of work which was regarded by many as drudgery, and he was compelled to study his art only ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... of the moment, an avocation, not dignified by receiving the best of a man. With William Cullen Bryant came a change. He told our nation that in the new world as well as in the old some men should live for the beautiful. Everything in nature spoke to him in terms of human life. Other poets saw the relation between their ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... and correct living, he and his entire household were saved from the Deluge. But after his miraculous deliverance from the destruction that overcame the old world, his entire character is changed. There is not a single passage to show us that he continued his avocation as a preacher. He became a husbandman; he kept a vineyard; and, more than all, he drank of the wine and got drunk! Awaking from a state of inebriation, he knew that Ham had beheld his nakedness and "told his two brethren." But "Shem and Japheth ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams |
