"Hobby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said the Man of Books, "give o'er A theme too vast for time and place. Go on, Sir Poet, ride once more Your hobby at his old free pace. But let him keep, with step discreet, The solid earth beneath his feet. In the great mystery which around us lies, The wisest is a fool, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... it be called paper-hanging indeed!—whose washing-tables were of deal, and whose delf was of the plainest ware, and even that minus sundry handles and spouts. Nor was the renowned O'Grady without his hobby, too. While the various members of his family were thwarting each other, his master-mischief was thwarting them all; like some wicked giant looking down on a squabble of dwarfs, and ending the fight by ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... the Americans; I thought they were sympathetic, imaginative, and full of fine enthusiasms; the one thing I could not always feel clear about was their future. I believe they were happier in their frame-houses than most people in most houses; having democracy, good education, and a hobby of work; the one doubt that did float across me was something like, 'Will all this be here at all in two hundred years?' That was the first impression produced by the wooden houses that seemed like the waggons of gipsies; it is a serious impression, but there is ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... when, to a quiet contemplator, it suggests the image of one of those rotatory entertainments commonly seen in fairs, and known by the name of "whirligigs or roundabouts," in which each participator of the pastime, seated on his hobby, is always apparently in the act of pursuing some one before him, while he is pursued by some one behind. Man, and woman too, are naturally animals of chase; the greatest still finds something to follow, and there is no one too humble ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... much flattered at her asking his protection for anything, that he would have promised to patronize Cousin Slender himself for her sake. He praised the Colonel and lauded the mess to the skies, and economy being his present hobby, he represented himself as living upon nothing, and saving his pay. He further gave notice of impending retirements, and advised that the application should be made without loss of time, lamenting grievously himself ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... (puff) dear, the (wheeze) sticks will prove very (wheeze) hereafter,' replied Jogglebury, bridling up at the imputation on his hobby. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... whose favourite hobby it has ever been, from the idea that it makes him master of Paris, lays the first stone to-day. Some people consider it the first stone of the mausoleum of his dynasty. I sincerely hope not; for everything ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... back over my own life, the precious times were generally seasons of great suffering; so much so, that the idea of discipline has become a hobby. But one can only learn all this by experience. Mrs. —— says she never sings the verse containing "E'en though it be a cross that raiseth me," and that little children never talk in that way to their mothers, and, therefore, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... "I 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 ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... office staff, wrote all his own letters, and not only wrote them but first carefully drafted them out in a hand minute almost as Jonathan Swift's. A strenuous worker, Mr. Johnstone, like most men who have no hobby, did not long survive his retirement from ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... this no charm for the tooth-ache. Old signior, walk aside with me: I have studied eight or nine wise words to speak to you, which these hobby-horses ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... why will you plague me about such nonsense?—Now the plays are begun I shall have no peace.— Isn't it sufficient to make yourself ridiculous by your passion for the theatre, without continually teasing me to join you? Why can't you ride your hobby-horse without desiring to place me on a pillion behind you, Mr. Dangle? Dang. Nay, my dear, I was only going to read— Mrs. Dang. No, no; you will never read anything that's worth listening to. You hate to hear ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... verily, we'll canonize him, Tho' Cant is his hobby and meddling his bliss, Tho' sages may pity and wits may despise him, He'll ne'er make a bit the worse ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... pleased that any one should be willing to discuss his hobby with him. His eyes by this time were apparently starting from their sockets, and I noticed that the pupils were dilated almost to the size of ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... grandfather—good man—would have laid down his life to save her a pain in her toe, but he had not a notion of the stuff she was made of. His hobby was the study of the runic crosses with which the Isle of Man abounds, and when she helped him with his rubbings and his casts he was as merry as an old sand-boy. Though they occupied the same house, and her bedroom ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... few that they tell us hardly anything. We know when and where Washington was born; and how, when he was little more than three years old,[1] he was taken from Bridges Creek to the banks of the Rappahannock. There he was placed under the charge of one Hobby, the sexton of the parish, to learn his alphabet and his pothooks; and when that worthy man's store of learning was exhausted he was sent back to Bridges Creek, soon after his father's death, to live with his half-brother Augustine, and obtain the benefits of a school kept by a Mr. Williams. There ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... that a man who is obviously uprooting mountains and dividing seas, tearing down temples and stretching out hands to the stars, is really a quiet old gentleman who only asks to be allowed to indulge his harmless old hobby and follow his harmless old nose. When a man splits a grain of sand and the universe is turned upside down in consequence, it is difficult to realize that to the man who did it, the splitting of the grain is the great affair, ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... hobby of mine. Don't think otherwise because I am running a stink engine. I'd rather be streaking along here behind a pair of fast-steppers. But I'd lose time on them, and, worse than that, I'd be too anxious ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... the most favoured of mortals. Lessons in their art were demanded on all sides and at all costs. They were so busy teaching it, they had little time to practise it. Men and women alike would forego engagements while they strove to perfect themselves in the new hobby; and the lady who, at balls, could boast that her feet had been shod by her own fair hands was an object of envy to all the less ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... not change its position: how will this dress look when it walks, runs, rushes, kneels, sits down, falls, and turns its back?" I think an edge was added to my mother's keen, rational, and highly artistic sense of this matter of costume because it was the special hobby of her "favorite aversion," Mr. E——, who had studied with great zeal and industry antiquarian questions connected with the subject of stage representations, and was perpetually suggesting to my father improvements on the old ignorant careless system which prevailed ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... sketched with that masterly pen that had already been so carefully trained by long and arduous practice in a life-school? His heart was in his work from first to last; beyond his bagpipes and his old books (for he was a passionate reader), he seemed to have no other hobby. His facility in sketching became phenomenal, as also his knowledge of what to put in and what to leave out, so that the effect he aimed at should be secured in perfection and with the smallest ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... fancy. Mitchell has such very high spirits, you see, and is determined to make everything go. He won't have conventional parties, and insists on plenty of verve; so, of course, one's forced to have it.' He sighed. 'They haven't any children, and they make a kind of hobby of entertaining in an ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... would have a hobby of my own, and do some steady stiff reading, only, as you are going to be a woman, and not a student, I would choose reading that linked me to as many as possible of other people's interests. How dull and shy poor little Miss Smith was yesterday, ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... promotion. He had the making of a most useful officer. And with this trouble coming on it was—it was—a highly foolish, indeed a highly reprehensible proceeding, sir." The Superintendent was rapidly mounting his pet hobby, which was the Force in which he had the honor to be an officer, the far-famed North West Mounted Police. For the Service he had sacrificed everything in life, ease, wealth, home, yes, even wife and family, to a certain extent. With him ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... smiling to herself at the oddity and the pleasantness of the chance that had brought those three together in such a quiet way, after all the weeks she had been seeing Mr. Carleton at a distance. And she enjoyed the conversation, too; for though Dr. Gregory was a little fond of his hobby, it was ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... observed of all observers," and realised fabulous prices. In a long range of booths, devoted to the products of manufacturing industry, some of the costliest productions of the looms of Europe were exhibited for sale. There were peep-shows, and swings, and merry-go-rounds, and hobby-horses, and, with so many inducements offered, it will not be supposed that holiday people ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... think of that?" And Mr. Osborn handed him the small round box which he had been turning. "I amuse myself so. It's my hobby." ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... much nicer, the Infanta thought, than the real bull-fight that she had been brought to see at Seville, on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of Parma to her father. Some of the boys pranced about on richly- caparisoned hobby-horses brandishing long javelins with gay streamers of bright ribands attached to them; others went on foot waving their scarlet cloaks before the bull, and vaulting lightly over the barrier when he charged them; and as for the bull himself, he was just like ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... Besides, he remembered her course on one occasion when he was in a great strait. He was but three years old then, but he remembered all about it. It was, in fact, this occurrence which had given him his hobby. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... woodpecker or a shrike or any one of the birds that experience taught him would always distract his grandfather's attention from anything that he was doing in order that he might confirm or contradict the rumour. People who are much interested in birds are less sociable than other naturalists. Their hobby demands a silent and solitary pursuit of knowledge, and the presence of human beings is prejudicial to their success. Parson Trehawke found that Mark's company was not so much of a handicap as he would have supposed; on the contrary he began to find it an advantage, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... having its best interpretation in the power of Christianity to heal. My system of Mind-healing swerves not from the highest ethics and from the spiritual goal. To climb up by some other way than Truth is to fall. Error has no hobby, however boldly ridden or brilliantly caparisoned, that can leap into the ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... 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 ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... get started on your hobby," implored Channing. "We're ignoramuses, Mona and I, and we want to talk ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... any common pursuit or interest in life which the two men may have shared?" the Inspector asked. "A hobby, for instance,—a collection of postage stamps, china, any common ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... snowstorm. I read from Spenser to the children, in the morning, of St. George and Una, Una and the Lion, and Prince Arthur. Then, Cinderella. They made an exquisite picture, with the hobby-horse. Julian was upon the horse,—as a king; Una at his side, presenting ambrosia. In the P. M. I read them Andersen's "Angel and Child," "The Swineherd," and "Little Ida's Flowers;" and their father read to them from "The Black Aunt." In the evening my husband read ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... meet with a gentleman or lady to share her home as sole paying guest; one with a hobby for gardening preferred; every home comfort; terms, L300 per ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... following document. It is one of many such; for he was a curious and industrious collector of old local traditions—a commodity in which the quarter where he resided mightily abounded. The collection and arrangement of such legends was, as long as I can remember him, his hobby; but I had never learned that his love of the marvellous and whimsical had carried him so far as to prompt him to commit the results of his inquiries to writing, until, in the character of residuary legatee, his will put me in possession of all his manuscript papers. To such as may think the ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... So children mounted on their hobby-horse Thinke they are riding, when with wanton toile They beare what should beare them. A man may well 175 Compare them to those foolish great-spleen'd cammels, That to their high heads beg'd of Jove hornes higher; Whose most uncomely and ridiculous pride When hee had satisfied, they could not use, ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... ninety." These expressions of grave doubt as to the expediency of "female suffrage," together with the fact that the editor of the Tribune, in his report as chairman of the Suffrage Committee in the New York Constitutional Convention, declared this new hobby "an innovation revolutionary and sweeping, openly at war with a distribution of duties and functions between the sexes as venerable and pervading as government itself," make the Tribune's recommendation that we shall "try the experiment in Kansas" rather ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and real. Those obscure solitudes which their imagination had peopled with spectral equestrian statues, are rescued by the sound of his cheery voice as part of the familiar and daylight world. We suspect that Agesilaus on his hobby-horse first humanized antiquity for most of us. Here was the human footprint which persuaded us that the past was inhabited ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... to his hobby] Ah I forgot. You saw no newspapers. But you ought to pick up the threads now. What ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the inscription recorded his name, as did the learned Dame Elizabeth Hobby on a brass ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... to him for some reason," said Irais, "and got him to explain his hobby to her, and he was silly enough to be taken in. Now which was the sillier ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... believing in his beloved Roman Camp; and this diversion enabled me to escape from Marius—I fear with a somewhat unseemly precipitation—by pressing him for information in regard to the matter which the children had in hand. As to openly checking the Vidame, when once he fairly is astride of his hobby, the case is hopeless. To cast a doubt upon even the least of his declarations touching the doings of the Roman General is the signal for a blaze of arguments down all his battle front; and I really do not ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... dragonnades swept over the protestant strongholds, awful heralds of the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The king, said a celebrated writer, exhibited his power by humbling the Pope and by crushing the Huguenots. He wished the unification of the Church and of France—the hobby of the great men of the day, presided over by Bossuet. Madame de Maintenon, a converted Calvinist, and who had secretly become his wife (1685) encouraged him in this design and suggested to him the cruel ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... time, you know, when the sight of so peaceful and attractive a home as this makes one wish that one had one like it of one's own. Of course a man has his tastes, his hobbies, his ambitions—every man, I mean, of character. And I am a man of character. But indulgence in a hobby is not incompatible with the love of a fireside, and the blessings of dulce domum, to say nothing of the placens uxor, who is the only true goddess of the hearth. Yes, dear friend, I confess that I should like—that I positively long—to marry. That is why, paradoxical as it may appear, ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... and of the inroads and devastations of the parvenu. They were thoroughly posted on old family estates and mansions, the intermarriages of the Dutch aristocracy, and the subject of heraldry. Mr. Schoonmaker made a hobby of old Bibles, and Mrs. Schoonmaker of old lace. The two hobbies combined gave a mingled air of erudition and gentility to the pair that was quite impressive, while their unquestionably good descent was a source of social capital to all of humbler origin ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... an extraordinary amount about the black races in Rhodesia; but if they sought enlightenment they were disappointed. No one knew anything about Major Carew, except that he was once in the Blues and now in the British South Africa police, and that the natives were more or less his hobby. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... has a hobby, and that hobby is that at every point where there is a view of any sort or description, in fact, one might say where there is no view at all, he erects an Aussichtsturm. These outlook towers are a bane of existence to a stranger. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... 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
... carpenters, 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 ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... when Cornelius van Baerle began to devote himself to tulip-growing, expending on this hobby his yearly revenue and the guilders of his father, there was at Dort, living next door to him, a citizen of the name of Isaac Boxtel who from the age when he was able to think for himself had indulged the same fancy, and who was in ecstasies at the mere mention of ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... way. The first thing I learned was the Count's churlish practice of closing his gates to strangers, which forces us to use art in obtaining the hospitality we are entitled to by general custom. So I had to discover some inclination or hobby of the man's, that I could make use of to approach him. I don't see how we can reach him through his love of dogs, without having prepared ourselves with special knowledge and a fine hound or so to attract his attention. ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... gardens at all equal to them before; and he then modestly owned that, "without any ambition of that sort himself—without any solicitude about it—he did believe them to be unrivalled in the kingdom. If he had a hobby-horse, it was that. He loved a garden. Though careless enough in most matters of eating, he loved good fruit—or if he did not, his friends and children did. There were great vexations, however, attending such a garden as his. The utmost care could not always secure the most valuable ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of the late tenant, "I reckon there was a good parson spoiled when 'e was made a farmer." And of a lawyer, who combined legal practice with the hobby of a small farm, that there was no doubt that "Lawyer ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... hadn't they given up every free hour for two years to working like Trojans? though, for that matter, who ever heard of any work the Trojans ever did that amounted to anything—except the spending of ten years in getting themselves badly defeated by a big wooden hobby-horse? ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... tinged with the old gentlemanly vice. He almost made penury his hobby. Oxberry's widow asked him, after his retirement, to play for her benefit: he said he could not, but that, if ever he performed again, he would present her with 100l. It is related of him too, that a friend asking him for a keepsake, he exchanged his old cotton umbrella for his friend's silk ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... customer if he could once be persuaded to buy. The old man paid no attention to what he was saying until he mentioned the picture of a hunting dog that hung above the desk. The old man's eyes kindled. This was his hobby and he forgot all about business while he talked about hunting, and ended by asking the salesman to go home with him and spend the night. The salesman accepted gladly, and the next morning they went rabbit hunting instead of going back to the office. ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... returned the compliment by praising her flowers in his eager, hearty, enthusiastic way. Her coolness made her seem to him very superior; his enthusiasm made him very piquant and delightful to her. And when he got upon his hobby and told her how grand a vocation the teacher's profession was, and recited stories of the self-denial of Pestalozzi and Froebel, and the great schemes of Basedow, and told how he meant here in this new country to build a great Institute on rational principles, ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... constitute the whole of happiness, 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 known in the neighborhood for her exemplary conduct and Christian principles. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... doctor's schloss, an erection built like the contrivances of the White Knight in "Through the Looking-glass," on "a plan of his own invention," had been his pet hobby for years, and now that it was finished, he invited every invitable person to come and ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... flying forth between Laura and her warm friend, Belle Endicott, who was still at Star Ranch, as Mr. Endicott's place was called. It may be said in passing that Mr. Endicott was a rich railroad president, and the ranch, while it paid well, was merely a hobby with him, and he and his family resided upon it only when it suited their fancy ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... the hill—(don't you shiver at the thought?)—why, to say truth, George Wynnos and I are both of opinion that nothing but evergreens will flourish there; but I trust I shall convert a present deformity into a very pretty little hobby-horsical sort of thing. It will not bear looking at for years, and that is a pity; but it will so far resemble the person from whom it takes name, that it is planted, as she has written, for the benefit ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... months ago, for the first time since my marriage, and things have been a little difficult between us—just at first. He really scarcely ever puts in an appearance at Curzon Street. I dare say you have heard that he makes a hobby of an amazing country house which he ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... George amorous of a worse-featured face than high-nosed Isabel; 'strange to spell or rede,' as I would wager my best destrier to a tailor's hobby, the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be. There, there!" with a smile, "I guess you think I'm pretty free with my criticism and remarks, don't you? You must excuse me. Housekeepin'—'specially the cookin' part—is my hobby, as you might say, and I was interested to see how a couple of men got along with the job. I mustn't set around and keep you from your work. You might want to make some more ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wine of Cyprus was loosening every tongue, and each one was prancing on his favorite hobby, the doctor, in a gondola, was waiting for the Duchess, having sent her a note written by Vendramin. Massimilla appeared in her night wrapper, so much had she been alarmed by the tone of the Prince's farewell, ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... little hobby horse, And it was dapple grey; Its head was made of pea-straw, Its tail was made of hay. I sold it to an old woman For a copper groat; And I'll not sing my song again Without ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... situated close to the gate of Burnham Park, and almost opposite Nugent's cottage. This was the sphere of labour for which Elsie was destined. The school was a neat, well-cared-for place—the special hobby of Lady Eleanor, who seldom let a day pass when at home without visiting it. Here Elsie Damer at once commenced her labours. The children were bright and clean, and had evidently been carefully taught by her ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... released; but whilst he was under arrest, a very personable and well-dressed individual approached, and introduced himself as Count ——, stating that he had known the boy for years, and that the keeping of pigeons formed his hobby. Something in the manner of the man aroused our suspicion, and after careful examination it was found that he himself was a spy; and in due ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... I was well aware that you would not find him in his study. If you could persuade him to come here and give us the benefit of his unique experience of this disease, the investigation of which has been his dearest hobby, I cannot doubt that he ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... He and his charming fiancee plan to run out of excuses during the early Fall of 1994, but this date may be changed at any time by mutual agreement, or the end of the world. He has given up an interest in river pollution in favor of a new hobby, grading type-cleaner. Garrett, who spends an hour each day expanding his repertoire, now claims the ability to distinguish year and vineyard for ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... is a hard worker, but I suspect that many of the amateur astronomers of England are Dr. Lees—rich men who, as a hobby, ride astronomy and employ a good astronomer. Dr. Lee gives the use of a good instrument to the curate; another to Mr. Payson, of Cambridge, who has lately ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... the educated classes? It has long since been the boast and hobby of advanced theology that it, and it alone, will satisfy the religious longings of the educated man who has broken with the traditional dogma and doctrines of orthodox Christianity. But what are the actual facts in the case? ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... hobby, but anything of a mechanical nature appealed to him. While a gasoline car uses electricity only to explode its fuel, Jim was nevertheless deeply interested, particularly as he had never been able to look ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... processes were all serious, and whose hobby was method, Mr. Galbraith had established a custom of giving himself a quiet half-hour of inviolable seclusion in which to read and consider his mail. During this sacred interval the stenographer, standing ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... is undoubtedly calculated to bias the judgment; but, however liable may be the obscure votary of science to override his hobby, Francis Bacon, Lord High Chancellor of England, in ascribing to scientific discoverers a higher merit than to legislators, emperors, or patriots, cannot be open to the charge of egoistic partiality. What, then, says this illustrious witness?—"The introduction of noble inventions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... one might have guessed it, however, what may be called a certain transmuted enthusiasm was alive in him. He had a hobby almost amounting to an obsession, not uncommon amongst Americans who have slipped downward in the social scale. It was the Bumpus Family in America. He collected documents about his ancestors and relations, he wrote letters with a fine, painful penmanship ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 to describe ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... sire; (female) mare, dam; (young) colt, foal, filly; (small) pony, tit, mustang; steed, charger, nag, gelding, cockhorse, cob, pad, padnag, roadster, punch, broncho, warragal, sumpter, centaur, hackney, jade, mestino, pintado, roan, bat horse, Bucephalus, Pegasus, Dobbin, Bayard, hobby-horse. Associated words: equine, equestrian, equestrianism, equestrienne, equerry, fractious, hostler, groom, hostlery, postilion, coachman, jockey, hippocampus, hippogriffe, manege, chack, hippology, hippophile, hippotomy, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... taps it at its sources, and leads it away to various ends, useful because they are harmless. Bibliomania, tulipomania, potichomania, squaring the circle, perpetual motion, a religious epic, the northwest passage,—anything will serve the purpose. Divide et impera is her motto. The hobby is the safeguard of society. Once mounted, every enthusiast ambles quietly off on some errand of his own, caring little what direction he takes, provided only it be the other. The Fifth-Monarchy men might have been troublesome, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... was to sell such engravings for two or three cents each to the print-shops in the city, where they were bought by refined amateurs, for the purpose of "illustrating" special volumes. This fashionable hobby has been the indirect cause of the ruin of many a choice book; and buyers of fine old editions are well aware that they must look well to their bargains, lest they find that the thief, at the bidding of the "collector," has plundered ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... vaguely resembled Napoleon III., but his hair was black; therefore he dyed it, and then the likeness was complete; and when he met another gentleman in the street also imitating the imperial countenance he was jealous and looked at him disdainfully. This need of imitation soon became his hobby, and, having heard an usher at the Tuilleries imitate the voice of the emperor, he also acquired the same intonations and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... there is no record or tradition other than that gathered by Parson Weems. He says: "The first place of education to which George was ever sent was a little old field school kept by one of his father's tenants, named Hobby, an honest, poor old man, who acted in the double capacity of sexton and schoolmaster. Of his skill as a gravedigger tradition is silent; but for a teacher of youth his qualifications were certainly ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... gifts that were one by one taken from the sack, there seemed to be nothing lacking and plenty for him to have at least one toy, but his name was not called. There was a hobby-horse, a top, a horn, a ball, a wagon, a doll, dishes, a rocker, candy, and nuts. A sudden longing came into his heart ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... little cause has mankind to be proud Of Noble Birth, the Idol of the Crowd! Have I abroad in Battels Honour won To be at home dishonourably undone? Mark'd with a Star and Garter, and made fine With all those gaudy Trifles once call'd mine, Your Hobby-Horses [1] and your Joys of State, And now become the Object of your Hate; But, d———'ee, Sir, I'll be Legitimate. I was your Darling, but against your Will, And know that I will be the Peoples ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... my special hobby, and the differences are equally obvious. There is as much difference to my eyes between the leaded bourgeois type of a Times article and the slovenly print of an evening half-penny paper as there could be between ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... do!" said he, in a tone of whimsical apology. "This won't do, you know. I'm floating off on my hobby (and there's a mixed metaphor that would do credit to your own Milesian blood!). I'm boring you to extinction, and I don't want to do that, for I'm anxious that you should come here again—and often. I should like to have you form the ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... passage just given, I confess it appears to me to mean somewhat more. Perhaps a jennet was a horse kept solely for pleasure, whose mane was suffered to grow to a considerable length, and was then ornamented with platting, &c.—A hobby might answer to what we now term ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... nevertheless I should see that the strait-jacket was brought into requisition. When your generosity train dashes recklessly beyond regulation schedules of safety, I must discharge engineer sympathy, and whistle down the brakes. What new hobby do you intend that I ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... to witness many of these little eccentricities, from being apprised of the peculiar hobby of mine host; yet, I confess, the parade with which so odd a dish was introduced somewhat perplexed me, until I gathered from the conversation of the Squire and the parson that it was meant to represent the bringing ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... "It's her hobby, poor young thing," whispered Mrs. Smith, "we all 'as 'em. My own is a light cake to my tea, ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... that had been allowed to remain unmoved for ages. The overleaning rock, which is separated from my temporary home only by a few yards, probably afforded shelter to generations of those degraded human beings from whom the anthropologist who puts no bridle on his hobby-horse is pleased to claim descent. Near the base is one of those symmetrically scooped-out hollows which are such a striking peculiarity of the formation here, and which suggest to the irreverent that a cheese-taster of prehistoric dimensions must ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the way Sir Henry put it on the day when he first invited him to lunch with him at his club. "I'd about as soon think of sitting down with one of my grooms as breaking bread with one of that lot; and I shall never get it out of my head that you're a gentleman going in for this sort of thing as a hobby—never b'Gad! if I live ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... collected postage-stamps, and the hobby had, incidentally, helped him wonderfully in his study of geography. Why should not autograph letters from famous persons be of equal service in his struggle for self-education? Not simple autographs—they were meaningless; but actual ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... she is a woman of business. She is without home or child, and her time and labour are arranged with military precision. She has her theory of the poor and of what can be done for the poor, and she rides her hobby from morning to night with an equal contempt for the sentimental almsgiving of the District Visitor and for the warnings of the political economist. No doubt an amazing deal of good is done, but it is done in a methodical fashion ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... are to be fitly housed, as a matter of right, and from their own sense of self-respect," returned Mrs. Duncombe; "not a few favourites, who will endure dictation, picked out for the model cottage. It is the hobby ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... importance, I think," said Mr. Flexen. "But, as I expect you've noticed, he likes to feel himself of importance. And whatever knowledge he has helps him to feel important. It's a harmless hobby. By the way, is there anything in the way of insanity in ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... explain the congeniality of humour with pathos, so exquisite in Sterne and Smollett, and hence also the tender feeling which we always have for, and associate with, the humours or hobby-horses of a man. First, we respect a humourist, because absence of interested motive is the ground-work of the character, although the imagination of an interest may exist in the individual himself, as if a remarkably simple-hearted man should ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... me alone with that abominable ally," cried the emperor, vehemently; "I do not want to hear of it nor to have anything to do with it. Public opinion is the hobby which my brother, the popular Archduke John, is riding all the time; but it will throw him one day into the mire, and then he will find out what it really amounts to. Pray, never speak to me again of public opinion, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... citizens have dealt with them as it is said the Indians are dealt with; they have given them counterfeit brooches and bugle-bracelets for gold and silver;[A] pins and peacock feathers for lands and tenements; gilded coaches and outlandish hobby-horses for goodly castles and ancient mansions; their woods are turned into wardrobes, their leases into laces; and their goods and chattels into guarded coats and gaudy toys. Should your Majesty fly to them for relief, you would fare like those birds that peek at painted fruits; ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... wealth would no doubt impress the impecunious Charles. In September he landed in Spain, so destitute that he was glad to accept the offer of a hobby from the English ambassador.[242] At the first meeting of his Cortes, they demanded that he should marry at once, and not wait for Francis's daughter; the bride his subjects desired was the daughter of the King of Portugal.[243] They were no more willing ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... brute strength, I grant," the marquise said; "so have the sons of our peasants; however, I do not want to find fault with him, it is your hobby, or rather that of Auguste, who is, I think, mad about these English; I will say nothing to prevent its having a fair trial, only I hope it will not be necessary for me to give him my ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... sanitarian lives—the man who saved many a life in the Crimea, and has numerous works due to his engineering skill, not only in this country, but in distant lands. There is little about his house suggestive of the craft of which he is a past master. He pleads a most artistic hobby: that of pictures; and after spending a day with him and Lady Rawlinson—they have been happily married for sixty-three years—I made a hurried survey of the artistic treasures on the walls once more, and tried to single out a picture which had ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... remember such an instance in my own freshman days. I fell into the hands of such an instructor in Greek. We were reading that most charming of Greek stories—The Odyssey. Textual criticism was this man's hobby, and we were put to work trying to compare texts, to delve into the intricacies of form and structure—trying to improve upon Homer! Such information as we could not find he gave us, in the formal lecture, day after day. But when ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... for home use. It should be borne in mind that in the early days of fruit growing in America it was the amateur planting of varieties that laid the foundations for the present industry. If shade trees are to be planted let them be nut trees. Plant nut trees as a hobby but do not go into nut culture on a large scale for profit unless ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... circular in which he announced his candidacy he made no reference to national politics, but confined himself mainly to a discussion of the practicability of improving the navigation of the Sangamon, the favorite hobby of the place and time. He had no monopoly of this "issue." It formed the burden of nearly every candidate's appeal to the people in that year. The excitement occasioned by the trip of the Talisman had not yet died away, although the little steamer was now dust and ashes, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay |
