"Hobby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every single one of them cost me a Louis-d'or? But it is my hobby to have generally ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... occupation. Nicholas was a plain farmer: he did not like innovations, especially the English ones then coming into vogue. He laughed at theoretical treatises on estate management, disliked factories, the raising of expensive products, and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did not make a hobby of any particular part of the work on his estate. He always had before his mind's eye the estate as a whole and not any particular part of it. The chief thing in his eyes was not the nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen in the air, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... 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 ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... interests me personally because Campion was the protagonist of unrhymed lyrical verse—my special metrical hobby. I like to think that William Strachey may have supported Campion in his controversy with Gabriel Harvey, who, by the way, lived at Saffron Walden, from which town came also William Strachey. There is danger, however, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... 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 August 3rd, 1583, with his ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... by the famous Italian Schiaparelli, and he looked at more of the reviews and found ever the same subject considered in the marked articles. All related to Mars. He was puzzled but delighted. "The dear girl has a hobby," he thought. "Well, she shall ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... collect me, he thought. Her hobby: interesting dates. She wanted to add me to her collection. An Experience. Calmly he walked to the end of the veranda and stared off into the night, choking his rage. He watched the moon making its dead ride across the sky, and stared at the sprinkling of stars. The night ...
— The Happy Unfortunate • Robert Silverberg
... was singularly virtuous; he was a faithful husband, a careful father and a considerate master. A book-lover and antiquary, he made a special hobby of heraldry and genealogy. It was the conscious and unconscious aim of the age to reconstruct a new landed aristocracy on the ruins of the old, and Burghley was a great builder and planter. All the arts of architecture and horticulture were lavished on Burghley ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... young man, whom Jimmy subsequently discovered to be the drama-loving Charteris, leaning back and taking advantage of a pause, "is the hobby of the sportsman and the life work of the avaricious." He took a little pencil from his waistcoat pocket, and made a rapid ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... reminds me of an old friend of mine in Cleveland who was devoted to his work. I talked to him, and no doubt bored him unspeakably, on my special hobby, which has always been what some people call landscape gardening, but which with me is the art of laying out roads and paths and work of that kind. This friend of thirty-five years ago plainly disapproved of a ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... expedition of 1578. He would have been in the disastrous second attempt in 1583 had not Queen Elizabeth, full of forebodings of danger to her favorite, refused to let him go. As it was he sent a ship at his own cost. Gilbert took a large supply of hobby-horses and other toys with which to please the savages. Mishap, desertion, and ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... and petulant brother, that for several weeks I have been pursuing, with unequalled persistence, some abominable conic problems proposed at the fellowship examination, and once I have mounted my hobby-horse, good-bye to letters, good-bye to replies, goodbye to everything." (Carpentras, 27th November, 1848.) "You are right, seven times right to storm at me, to grumble at my silence, and I admit, in all ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... Sydney should be appointed Lord of Misrule, or ordained Abbot of Unreason at the least, so successful had been his revival of the Mummers, the Hobby-horse not forgotten. Their host had entrusted to Lord Henry the restoration of many old observances; and the joyous feeling which this celebration of Christmas had diffused throughout an extensive district was a fresh argument in favour of Lord Henry's principle, that a mere mechanical ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... they are in this year of Peace 1947," responded his dragoman, arresting him before a statue; "for the development of this hobby has been peculiar since you were here in 1910, when the childlike and contortionist movement was just beginning to take ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... outlaws themselves Colonel Webb was disposed to talk freely. Duane could not judge whether the Colonel had a hobby of that subject or the outlaws were so striking in personality and deed that any man would know all about them. The great name along the river was Cheseldine, but it seemed to be a name detached from an ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... boy," the latter murmured, "he's off on his hobby. Let him go on! He enjoys it more than anything ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with those flints of his, that weigh me down at this moment. This stone-collecting, par exemple! I wonder what induced me to take up such a hobby. The German Professor, as usual. Ah, Mr. Koken, Mr. Koken—those light words of yours have borne a heavy fruit. I possess four hundred implements now, and they will double the weight of my luggage and ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Hobby, Mrs. Oveta Culp, Former U. S. Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare; President, Editor, Publisher, Houston Post; Trustee, American Assembly of Columbia University, Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships, Inc.; Director, Committee for Economic Development; ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... 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 it ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Death,' 'Conqueror's Road.' They were no kid stuff. Why, yesterday I'd never even have thought of some of the ideas I used in my detective stories, that I published under a nom-de-plume. And my hobby, chemistry; I was pretty good at that. Patented a couple of processes that made me as much money as my writing. You think a thirteen-year-old just dreamed all that up? Or, here; you speak French, don't you?" He switched languages and spoke at some length in good conversational slang-spiced ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... "mizzles," After all his recent "fizzles"? (Most expressive slang, the Yankee!) Pas si bete, my friends. No thank ye! Came a cropper? Very true! But I remount—my hobby's new, So's my trumpet. Rooey-too! France go softly? Pas de danger! Whilst ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... her mind that she would boldly avow her indifference to all creeds and all theologians, from Confucius to Swedenborg. She might consent to live for a time amidst the dullness and desolation of Les Tourelles, but she would not be weighed down and crushed by Miss Skipwith's appalling hobby. The mere idea of the horror of having every day to discuss a subject that was in its very nature inexhaustible, filled her ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... consideration the employment of times of leisure or relaxation; the occupation of such hours being due almost solely to the natural bent of the individual, without the interfering action of necessity or expediency. Most men, perhaps especially eminent men, have a "hobby",—some absorbing object, the pursuit of which forms the most natural avocation of their mind, and to which they turn with the certainty of at least satisfaction, if not of exquisite pleasure. The man who follows ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... I should be loth To let escape from one or both, So saddle for next heat: The bell is rung, the course is cleared, Mount on your hobby, "nought afear'd," Black-jacket can't ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... had pursued a hobby which had begun in his boyhood days during summer vacations at the seashore—the collecting of exoskeletons of mollusks and crustaceans. Long ago his assortment of cowries, spiny combs and yellow dragon-castles had outgrown their glass cabinet and overflowed into ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... hobby horse with gorgeous top, The dearest in Charles Mather's shop; Or glittering tinsel of Mayfair Could with ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... a hobby of his," here interposed Mr. Winston. "He makes lengthy speeches on the subject, and has published two of them in pamphlet form. Have you ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... that's too much, Muir," answered Mr. Burroughs. He declared that it stuck in his crop—this theory that ice alone accounts for this great valley cut out of the solid rocks. When the Scot would get to riding his ice-hobby too hard, Mr. Burroughs would query, "But, Muir, the million years before the ice age—what was going ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... in the district. Then he was taken into tow by old James Illingworth (now deceased), who ran the Worth Valley Chair Works, at Ingrow, opposite the Worth Valley Hotel. A new stone building now occupies the place of the old structure. Now my friend Howard's great hobby was making marionettes, and performing with them; and of these Lilliputian mummers he made a set, and then discussed ways and means for appearing with them in public. I was by him put into the trinitarian post of scenic ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... 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
... 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 and would have ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... pathos. When I say that Shakespeare used the current language of his day, I mean only that he habitually employed such language as was universally comprehensible,—that he was not run away with by the hobby of any theory as to the fitness of this or that component of English for expressing certain thoughts or feelings. That the artistic value of a choice and noble diction was quite as well understood in his day as in ours is evident from ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... yourself an amoeba or some primitive organism of that sort, under a Titan's microscope. He was large, undifferentiated, inert—since I could remember him he had done nothing but take his temperature and read the Churchman. Oh, and cultivate melons—that was his hobby. Not vulgar, out-of-door melons—his were grown under glass. He had miles of it at Wrenfield—his big kitchen-garden was surrounded by blinking battalions of green-houses. And in nearly all of them melons were grown—early melons and late, French, English, domestic—dwarf ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... showed her how to manage the hot and cold water, and which bell to ring if she needed anything, and in every imaginable way treated her as a guest, whom it was pleasant to serve, had really no plans just then—no hobby to ride—but simply acted out the dictates of her heart. You will remember that her Christian life had been always unconventional. The very fact that during her early girlhood she had been painfully trammelled by what "they" ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... glimpse of Charlie's hobby. And from the luck-less moment when I so innocently invited him to mount it, up to the time when I forcibly compelled him to dismount from it, I had ample opportunity to exercise my "smiling patience, sublime dignity and heroic fortitude." Whether or not I improved my opportunities ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... many builders,—and no architect. They thought to make up the lack of a head by a superfluity of hands. This is a characteristic of Hurry. It seeks ever to make energy a substitute for a clearly defined plan,—the result is ever as hopeless as trying to transform a hobby-horse into a ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... from business, starting on country expeditions, taking a carriage whenever the distance exceeded Emily's powers of walking beside my chair; sketching, botanising, or investigating church architecture, our newest hobby. I sketched, and the other two rambled about, measuring and filling up archaeological papers, with details of orientation, style, and all the rest, deploring barbarisms and dilapidations, making curious and delightful discoveries, pitying those who thought ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... squaw bestowed upon him, through the interpreter, certain secret magic formulae for working enchantments on his city patients, and thereby effecting rapid cures and filling his coffers. Knowing of Bayne's hobby for linguistics, the oculist jocularly turned these archaic curios over to him. In that connection Bayne recounted that after the child had departed with his mother from the mountains, he himself being detained by ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of his translators was complete, probably not equalled by that of any other member of his craft. He made a specialty of the study, a hobby of it. And it is more likely, as it is more gratifying, to believe that he caught his famous caption (Sharps and Flats) from a paraphrase of his favorite classic poet than from the play bill of a modern ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... you will think as I do. My father teaches fencing and boxing in London; I was educated at a school you never heard of; I am helped here by an old gentleman who discovered that I was more or less intelligent. He has a mania for experiments, and I am his latest hobby. Have I said enough to put you off, ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... ahem! an excellent woman, but it is her hobby to believe that everyone is tottering on the brink of the grave; and, upon my life, I believe she is offended if people don't fall into it! We will show her how to make constitutions and turn pale-faced little ghosts into rosy, hearty ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... am not deceiving myself as to that. But I have the money and if I chose to spend it on this fad (as one of my friends called it) I don't see why I shouldn't do it. Since your grandmother died I have not felt the same interest in Aldercliffe that I used to. When she was alive that was my hobby. I shall simply be putting out the money in a different direction, that is all. Perhaps it will be a less ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... had at last succeeded in getting upon his favourite hobby-horse, and had no intention of dismounting ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... hobby, rode it irresistibly. He discoursed of clocks and their makers, and Barrant listened in silence. The subject was not without its fascination for him, because it suggested a strange train of thought about the hood clock which was the text, as it were, of the lawyer's discourse. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... and a few friends? He remembered a past Christmas, when he had bought Mamie that now headless doll with the few coins that were left him after buying their frugal Christmas dinner. There was an old spotted hobby-horse that another Christmas had brought to Abner—Abner, who would be driving a fast trotter to-morrow at the Springs! How everything had changed! How they all had got up in the world, and how far beyond this kind of thing—and yet—yet it would have been rather comfortable to have ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... king's declaration, and was ever of that mind, those May games, wakes, and Whitsun ales, &c., if they be not at unseasonable hours, may justly be permitted. Let them freely feast, sing and dance, have their puppet-plays, hobby-horses, tabors, crowds, bagpipes, &c., play at ball, and barley-breaks, and what sports and recreations they like best. In Franconia, a province of Germany, (saith [3303]Aubanus Bohemus) the old folks, after evening prayer, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... time or in any weather, which was his one disagreeable, superior-to-others trick. Most of his qualities were likable, and he was likable, though a queer fellow in some ways, said his best friends—the ones who called him "Petro." When the ship played that she was a hobby-horse or a crab (if that is the creature which shares with elderly Germans a specialty for walking from side to side), also a kangaroo, and occasionally a boomerang, ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... by both the Benjamins. It was their hobby. Not the sort of history taught in most schools, "fixed up" for the young, but the true history of our country—its blunders, its ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... the amount was considerable. A man must be rich to pay for this hobby, for in any case it would not return him a halfpenny per cent. He would even have to be immensely rich for the transaction was to be a "cash" one, and even in the United States it is as yet rare to find citizens with $1,100,000 in their pockets, who would ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... His playing gratified the Electoral ear; he would have been provided for, had he not in conversation with his Highness happened to express a rather free opinion of the Mannheim Academy, which at that time was his Highness's hobby. On the instant of this luckless oversight, the door of patronage was slammed in Schubart's face, and he stood solitary on the pavement ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... times, no! Are you not aware that I am very European in tastes, am fond of books, and have a hobby in a small aquarium? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... 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 ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... and that was not small and it steadily increased. It was caused by a progressive alteration and deterioration in the character of my master. In all other respects he remained the man he had been when he first bought me, but as a gem-fancier his hobby became a passion which deepened into a mania and colored, or discolored, all he did. He had, as he always had had, a very large surplus of income over and above what was needful to maintain his huge estates ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... and so on, ad infinitum. It became an old story later, but it was new at that time, and he kept the thought closely to himself. None the less he was glad to have Stener speak of this, since street-railways were his hobby, and he was convinced that he would be a great master of them if he ever had an opportunity ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... later accused by Hamilton, Washington's aide-de-camp, of making a "hobby-horse" out of his desire to march upon New York, and of riding it on all occasions; but it was no less a hobby-horse with him than the defense of Philadelphia was with his Commander-in-Chief, who many times imperiled the safety of other sections by withdrawing ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... first the wife of Sir Thomas Hobby, ambassador to France, and afterwards, of John, Lord Russel, son and heir of Francis Russel, Earl of Bedford. Such was her progress in the learned languages, that she gained the applause of the most eminent scholars of the age, and for the tombs of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... the window-shutters, Nanse and I, out of good-fellowship, thought we could not do less than ask the honest man, whose cleverality had diverted us so much, to sit still and take a chack of supper;—James being up in the air, from having been allowed to ride on his hobby so briskly, made only a show of objection; so, after a rizzard haddo, we had a jug of toddy, and sat round the fire with our feet on the fender—Benjie having fallen asleep with his clothes on, and been carried away to his bed. ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... each and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which, though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will. They were all cheerful, and ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... pious, and earnest man, and a good exhorter, and had an unfaltering faith that the Lord was immediately to appear. But his wife was the smartest one in the family. She was fluent and voluble. She had an unabashed forehead and a bitter and defiant tongue. It was her hobby to declaim against the popular idea of the existence of the human spirit apart from the body. With her this was equivalent to a witch riding on a broomstick or going to heaven on a moonbeam. Spirit is breath—so she dogmatically affirmed—and when a man breathes ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... 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 they would be ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... ten points of the standard. A few less bingo parties and Brownie meetings and that many more book reviews or serious soirees would balance the social activity chart. If the model railroad club were canceled and a biological activity group substituted, the hobby classification would look much better. Then, in the number of children, actual and planned, Clearwater is definitely out of line, too. You see, the standard takes the form of the well-known bell-shaped curve. Clearwater is way down on ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... and just at the epoch of this story—for story it is getting to be after all—my grand-uncle Rumgudgeon was accessible and pacific only upon points which happened to chime in with the caprioles of the hobby he was riding. For the rest, he laughed with his arms and legs, and his politics were stubborn and easily understood. He thought, with Horsley, that "the people have nothing to do with the laws but to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... him in the salon, saw him enter between the folding doors with a face upon which his distaste of the day had cast a shadow. Dupontel was no more than twenty-five, and the Prince was one of his admirations and his most expensive hobby. He rose from his seat, smiling, surveying, the other's effect of immaculate clothing, fine bearing, and striking looks, and marking the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... They left a deep impression on my mind. I speak of him as he was in the dawn of his eightieth summer—when pale blue spots bespread his hands, and his bony fingers he would when excited frisk across the polished crown of his head. His great hobby was his knowledge of diplomacy. And, too, he was forever talking about the affairs of the nation, and would not unfrequently get put out with the whole parish, because it withheld from him, he said, that deference his experience was entitled to. He had, many years ago, been in some way attached to ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... Squire humbly, and in one of those illustrative aphorisms which, if less subtle than Riccabocca's, were more within reach of the popular comprehension; "nay—we are all human; and every man has his hobby; sometimes he breaks in the hobby, and sometimes the hobby, if it is very hard in the mouth, breaks in him. One man's hobby has an ill habit of always stopping at the public house! (Laughter.) ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... see Petternek let the cat out of the bag prematurely," he said with a smile. "I hadn't intended to spring it until it was a polished work of engineering art. It's been more of a hobby than anything ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to have made a hobby of the literature that arouses violent emotion and mental excitement, or lacerates the nerves, or shocks and startles. The lifelike and the natural are not powerful enough for his taste, though some of his ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... upright, though somewhat unnecessarily rigid; at the third round he shut his eyes. During the fourth his hat fell off, and he clasped his horse's neck. By the fifth he had laid his yellow head against the Black Prince's mane, and so clung anyhow till the hobby-horses stopped, when the proprietor assisted him to alight, and he sat down rather suddenly and said he had ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... smiths, and such like, requisite for such an action; also mineral men and refiners. Beside, for solace of our people and allurement of the savages, we were provided of musique in good variety; not omitting the least toys, as morris-dancers, hobby-horses, and May-like conceits, to delight the savage people, whom we intended to win by all fair means possible." An armament complete enough, even to that tenderness towards the Indians, which is so striking a feature of the Elizabethan seamen (called out in them, perhaps, by ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... constructed a double line of miniature tracks, which connected all the rooms on the ground floor of the house and considerably interfered with the parlourmaid's duties. It was known to the family as the Great Auckland Railway. Another favourite hobby of the young engineer was to lie on his back and watch the spider spin her web, comparing the results with a railway map of Great Britain. It was seldom that he went to bed without having learnt at least a page of Bradshaw ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... His Majesty's hobby was hunting, and no sooner had I made my bow than he began a conversation on that subject, thrusting his hands nearly up to the elbows into the pockets of his trousers. He desired to learn about the large game of America, particularly ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... journal, "makes his own clothes to pass the time away." This is better than his old hobby of making wars to pass ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... tempt me! When I mount my hobby it carries me fast and far. Save yourself from its heels. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... compunction, "you'll think me an awful bore, Jerrolds, but I've been more or less practising on you, haven't I? But you'll remember, perhaps, this used to be a sort of hobby of mine, and I work it into shape nowadays for a young men's club ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... displayed their capacity for other paces than the walk. She saw to it that her coachman kept them at their utmost speed. The sight of her tearing along a highway became familiar everywhere throughout the suburban countryside. She made a hobby of extremely fast driving and of ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... 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. See also on ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... together with his strength of mind, marked though it was usually by his geniality, makes it the more surprising in Father Uria's case. Yet such was the fact, and as such was it recognized by all with whom he came in contact; for in this instance it was "love me love my"—cats! This hobby of the friar was one he had had from childhood; but gaining man's estate, he had kept it in subjection (fearing it was not in accord with the strictest propriety, especially after taking orders) until he came to California. Here he had ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... Both house and garden were a living monument to Dick's natural refinement and good taste. There were no jarring notes or lavish, tawdry display, the pitfalls into which the parvenue and petit bourgeois invariably fall. This was his only hobby, and just why he indulged it, he himself would have found it difficult to answer, for in reality, he cared ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... who knew nothing of love, and had never seen in marriage anything but the means of transmitting property to another self, had long sworn to marry Veronique to some rich bourgeois,—so long, in fact, that the idea had assumed in his brain the characteristics of a hobby. His neighbor, the hat-maker, who possessed about two thousand francs a year, had already asked, on behalf of his son, to whom he proposed to give up his hat-making establishment, the hand of a girl so well ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... eager haste, now that his secret was out, he was for dropping everything else and rushing headlong into his hobby. Cicely ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... disinterestedness. If you shall now array yourselves as a political party, and hold out mercenary rewards to induce men to rally under your standard, there is reason to fear that you will be regarded as those who have made the anti-slavery cause a hobby to ride into office, however plausible or sound may be your pretexts for such a course. You cannot, you ought not, to expect that the political action of the State will move faster than the religious action of the Church, in favor of the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... of these sonorous designations for common things was a sort of conversational hobby with him. I cannot say that he was unduly proud of the little draughts of learning he had thus taken at the neighboring fountains, but rather that it became a sort of passion with him, yet regulated by a sincere desire to impart to his children all the knowledge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... idiot! If you didn't want your little pet hurt, you'd best have kept him home. I understand he's your special hobby." ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... here, for I have had an intimation from Private Cox that now is my opportunity to see his bare feet. A fortnight ago I might have hesitated to accept this kind invitation; to-day I insist upon his bringing them along at once. In fact, my hobby in life is other people's feet; I have fitted a hundred pairs of them with socks and with boots, and I have assisted personally at the pricking of their blisters and the trimming of their excrescences. What a fall from our intellectual heights! But so it is with us, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... Reading was my new hobby; my heart beat with impatience to run over the new book I carried in my pocket; the first moment I was alone, I seized the opportunity to draw it out, and thought no longer of rummaging my master's closet. I was even ashamed to think that ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... of no use to attempt to feed cattle, unless you can command a staff of experienced men to take charge of them. However faithful in other respects, these men must have a taste and a strong liking to cattle—they must be their hobby. Even with men of the greatest experience, the difference in the thriving of the different lots upon the same keep is great. They must not be oppressed with having too many in charge, or the owner will suffer by his ill-judged parsimony. From August till November a man may ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... also the gold; it was too heavy for him to pack, especially as he had no way to carry water. Then taking a small bag of gold dust in his pocket he started across the desert. He had a hobby for taking photographs and carried a small camera with him, and before leaving he photographed the place, which he called "The Mound of Eternal Silence," so that in case anything happened to him it could be ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... turf on the breast of the heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment. There is more of the fire of native genius in it than in half-a-dozen of modern English Bacchanalians! Now I am on my hobby-horse, I cannot help inserting two other old stanzas, which ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Doctor Zimmermann who first told her the truth. Not that the good Doctor meant to do so. The Herr Doctor had had his attention turned to glaciers by some rounded stones in his garden by the Traunsee, and more particularly by the Herr Privatdocent Spluethner. Spluethner, like Uncle Toby, had his hobby-horse, his pet conjuring words, his gods ex machina, which he brought upon the field in scientific emergencies; and these gods, as with Thales, were Fire and Water. Craters and flood were his accustomed ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... fluttered off, only, however, to come hurrying back with little, short, [61] scudding steps, to implore them all to come to tea with her as soon as possible in the garden that was her special hobby, and in ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... highly interested in the court of justice being held over a dispute between two villages. The little plain on which lay the commissioner's station was not cultivated, but it lay in the central part of his district, and was eminently suited for ostrich farming, which was his hobby. ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... twelve hundred years. These, while not so ancient as that, were still of the oldest men to be come at who could move without crutches and whose estate was not of too much dignity for such sports. And Maid Marion was the oldest and smallest of them all, riding her hobby-horse, dressed in a yellow petticoat and a crimson stomacher, with a great wig of yellow flax hanging down under her gilt crown, and a painted mask to hide her white beard. And after Maid Marion came dancing, ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... home vegetable garden is a hobby; with others, especially in these days of high prices, a great help. There are many in both classes whose experience in gardening has been restricted within very narrow bounds, and whose present spare time for gardening is limited. It is as "first aid" to such persons, ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... There's absolutely no need for you to go to the office. It only makes it very 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
... his ability to read faces. It was his particular hobby, and the leisure he had to apply to it had given him a remarkable appraising eye. Within ten minutes he had read much more than had greeted his eye. A wave of pity went over him—pity for the patient, the girl, and his friend. The ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... taste for mechanics and natural science. There was an awakening of the mind, in physics as well as in politics, at that period; and it must be confessed that the natural philosophers have succeeded better than the constitution-makers. Paine's mechanical hobby was an iron bridge. A single arch, of four hundred feet span, and twenty feet in height from the chord-line, was to be thrown over the Schuylkill, near Philadelphia. The idea was suggested to him by a spider's web, a section of which the bridge ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... winter away from friends and business, amid all the discomforts of Southern hotels, they were happy in having at least one thing which they loved to do. Blessed is the invalid who has an outdoor hobby. One man, whom I met more than once in my beach rambles, seemed to devote himself to bathing, running, and walking. He looked like an athlete; I heard him tell how far he could run without getting "winded;" and as he sprinted up and down the sand ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... 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 men of wealth ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... these evenings heartily, for there was no ceremony; each comer brought his mission, idea, or need, and genuine hospitality made the visit profitable or memorable to all, for entire freedom prevailed, and there was stabling for every one's hobby. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... 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, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... amateur, Professor. But it is a good thing for an old man to have a hobby, a very perplexing hobby. Modern science makes so many strides every year, every day, that it is practically impossible for an amateur to keep apace." He preceded them to a spacious shed in the rear of the house. It was carefully and immaculately arranged, each article ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... could wish. I entertain, and have always entertained, the sincerest regard for such games as Hunt-the-Slipper and Blind-Man's Buff. But I have now reached a time of life, when, to have my eyes blindfolded and to have a powerful boy of ten hit me in the back with a hobby-horse and ask me to guess who hit me, provokes me to a fit of retaliation which could only culminate in reckless criminality. Nor can I cover my shoulders with a drawing-room rug and crawl round on my hands and ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... necessity for being idle, or to relinquish photographic pursuits entirely, even though the weather and light combine to render out-door work almost impracticable; and most amateurs will be found to have some hobby or favorite amusement which enables them to keep in practice during those months when many channels of employment are closed to them; and probably one of the most popular as well as the most pleasing occupations is the production ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... 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
... which he built himself was his hobby, and in the refinement and catholicity of taste it shows, there is so just a reflex of his characteristics that an account of it is indispensable to any book which claims ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... had experimented a lot with spinning machinery, and talked with him; he also met John Kay, who at one time had helped Highs. And because he was such an intelligent listener and seemed to understand machinery so well these men babbled to him about their hobby. Having heard all they had to say Arkwright went off by himself and set quietly to work to try out on a small scale certain notions of his own. These notions had to do with spinning cotton by drawing rollers, and they worked perfectly. That was ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... at the moment with the pipes, and catching the Captain's last word, "on one of your hobby horses already! You're not safe!—I can't leave you for two minutes. Here's a long pipe for you. How in the world ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... instantly as an old-timer of the most venerable sort. ITS pioneered many important innovations, including transparent file sharing between machines and terminal-independent I/O. After about 1982, most actual work was shifted to newer machines, with the remaining ITS boxes run essentially as a hobby and service to the hacker community. The shutdown of the lab's last ITS machine in May 1990 marked the end of an era and sent old-time hackers into mourning nationwide (see {high moby}). The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden is maintaining one ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... fell more and more in love with his flower-seraglio; and the pains which he bestowed on his garden, the sweet round of the labors of the months, held Goodman Blondet fast in his greenhouse. But for that hobby he would have been a deputy under the Empire, and shone conspicuous beyond a doubt in the ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... that the coming of this strange man meant to her rushed suddenly over her. He was a man, obviously, who moved in the world, her world, since he apparently travelled extensively and his father was wealthy enough to run a racing stable as a hobby and was a member of the dwindling class of ancienne noblesse. It was characteristic of her that she put first what she did. How could she bear to meet one of her own order in the position in which she was? She who had been proud Diana Mayo and now—the mistress of an Arab Sheik? She laid her face ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull |
