"Dabbler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The dabbler in science and invention often fancies himself a discoverer, asserts his claims, and receives recognition from those who are still more ignorant of the subject than himself. Under this head come the performances of Mr. Bishop and other sciolists ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... all antiquity. He had been taught by Gamaliel, who was versed in "the learning of the Greeks." His address at Athens was deliberately meant to bear a relation to the philosophy of the experts who were present, but necessarily it could only introduce a few salient allusions, such as even a dabbler could have picked up, and we can hardly blame the specialists for their erroneous judgment. As he says himself: "The Greeks demand philosophy; but we proclaim a Messiah crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... how Turk, most faithful and loyal of servants, began his apparently endless employment with Mr. Philip Quentin, dabbler in stocks, bonds and hearts. Whatever his ugly past may have been, whatever his future may have promised, he was honest to a painful degree in these days with Quentin. Quick-witted, fiery, willful and as ugly as a little demon, Turk knew no ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... "A dabbler in science, Mr. Holmes, a picker up of shells on the shores of the great unknown ocean. I presume that it is Mr. Sherlock Holmes whom I ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... helped Oldfield to break the spirit of one commandment, was a brilliant figure in the reign of Queen Anne, albeit, like other brilliant figures of that period, he has passed into the darkness of oblivion. A clever dabbler in literature, an honest politician—a politician with scruples was as rare in those days as he is now—and a man of honour who could drink as much as his friends, the volatile Arthur was, perhaps, best known as the most attractive ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... are concerned.... The code is absolute on that subject.... Their challenge once made, to which you, Monsieur Chapron, have to reply by yes or no, these gentlemen should withdraw immediately.... It is not your fault, it is Ardea's, who has allowed that dabbler in spurious dividends to perform his part of intriguer.... But we will rectify all in the right way, which is the French.... And ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... ignoramus of a fellow who finds that he hasn't brains in sufficient quantity to make his way as a walking advertiser, or an eye-sore prig, or a salt-and-batter man, thinks, of course, that he'll answer very well as a dabbler of mud. But there never was entertained a more erroneous idea than that it requires no brains to mud-dabble. Especially, there is nothing to be made in this way without method. I did only a retail business myself, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... "MOURN, dabbler in dull party rhyme, Thy mind's disease, thy name's disgrace. Ah, lucky! if the hand of Time Should all thy Muse's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... us will you undertake? Whom among us dost thou think that thou canst knock down as easily as yon poor dabbler in the ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... any opinions that could rightly be called her own, I would remind them that she had always had good health, and that her intellectual faculties had been kept in full and healthy exercise, nor had once afforded the suspicion of a tendency towards artistic utterance in any direction. She was no mere dabbler in anything: in music, for instance, she had studied thorough bass, and studied it well; yet her playing was such as I have already described it. She understood perspective, and could copy an etching, in pen and ink, to a hair's-breadth, yet her drawing was hard and mechanical. She was pretty ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... understood each other. They were kindred spirits, differing widely in intellectual power, but equally vain, restless, false and malevolent. Montgomery was introduced to Neville Payne, one of the most adroit and resolute agents of the exiled family, Payne had been long well known about town as a dabbler in poetry and politics. He had been an intimate friend of the indiscreet and unfortunate Coleman, and had been committed to Newgate as an accomplice in the Popish plot. His moral character had not stood high; but he soon had an opportunity of proving that he possessed courage and fidelity ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her. Yet no one could say that at the present time she did not live a careful life, justifying, so far as eye could see, the protection of the Seigneur, M. Rossignol, a man of queer habits and queerer dress, a dabbler in physical science, a devout Catholic, and a constant friend of the Cure. He it was who, when an effort was made to drive Paulette out of the parish, had said that she should not go unless she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... work advances the conduct of him who leads it on with real abilities clears up, the appearing inconsistencies are reconciled, and when it is once consummated the whole shows itself so uniform, so plain, and so natural, that every dabbler in politics will be apt to think he could have done the same. But, on the other hand, a man who proposes no such object, who substitutes artifice in the place of ability, who, instead of leading parties ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... unembarrassed exuberance,—a man who stood just within the curtained doorway and flicked a small graying moustache with the point of his forefinger took in the scene with a studious regard. Every small educational community has its scholar manque—its haunter of academic shades or its intermittent dabbler in their charms; and Basil Randolph held that role in Churchton. No alumnus himself, he viewed, year after year, the passing procession of undergraduates who possessed in their young present so much ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... the pretty red and white of the boyish dabbler in Art—for Lyle had lately taken a fancy that way too—and then at the countenance he maligned. She did not say a word; but Lyle hovering round, found his interference somewhat sharply put aside ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... most cheerful and familiar hours, the lustrous darkness of his eyes and hair, and even the peculiarities of his shape, in the delicate smallness of the hands, and the Arab-like turn of the stately head, appeared to fix him as belonging to one at least of the Oriental races. And a dabbler in the Eastern tongues even sought to reduce the simple name of Zanoni, which a century before had been borne by an inoffensive naturalist of Bologna (The author of two works on botany and rare plants.), to the radicals of the extinct language. Zan was unquestionably the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in New York was not a fashionable resting place. It was a work-shop. You could have tea there, of course, and you were sure to meet people you knew and liked, but it was quite as much of a work-shop as any you could mention. He was not a dabbler in art, not a mere dauber of pigments: he was an ARTIST. People argued that because he was a thoroughbred and doomed to be rich, his conscious egotism would show itself at once in the demand for ridiculously high prices. In that they happily were fooled, not to say disappointed. He began by ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon |
