"Hobbyhorse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... where Lady Mowbray and daughter are traveling; may be Rhaetia or North Pole," Adalbert had written with characteristic flippancy. "Have seen neither for eight years, and scarcely know them. But Lady M. tall brown old party with nose like hobbyhorse. Helen dark, ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... 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 you ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... itself to a good deal of idleness and waste of time, unless a man or woman be very determined to employ their spare time profitably. For this reason, I should advise any actor, or actress, to cultivate some rational hobby or interest by the side of their work; for until the time comes for an actor to assume the cares and labours of management, he must have a great deal of time on his hands that can be better employed than in hanging ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... 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 about them all the time. As for this thing, why, it has no nerves, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... is really a great artist there—a man whose sole hobby is his kitchen, and who, if he chooses, can send you up a dinner second to none. His name is Guichard. Go and have a talk with him. Hear what he has to say on the fond-de-cuisine theory. Let him arrange your menu and await the result with confidence. That confidence ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... 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
... Hannah's hobby is sick folks, as you might say. If there's a cat in the neighborhood that's ailin' she's always dosin' of it up and fixin' medicine for it, and the like of that. And Sophi's one of them 'New Thoughters' and don't believe ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... riding your hobby and you ought to see you can't ride with all these fine people in your path. Come down at once or I'll desert you! Let's go in and hear that waltz," and Kate laughingly pulled the hobby-rider into the path that led to the conservatory where ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... is a secondary consideration, and designed only to make that agreeable which is at the same time useful, to such noble purposes as health and wisdom. But what should we say to a man who mounted his chamber-hobby, or fought with his own shadow, for his amusement only? how much more absurd and weak would he appear who swallowed poison ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... is Lady H lne Derl. She is the wife of Lord Derl. You won't see much of Lord Derl, because he spends most of his time in a sort of home for incurables. His hobby is faunal research. In other words, he's a drunkard. Bah! We won't talk any ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... eager interest, because there was a fatuous grin on the face of every one of them, officers and all. The colonel of the Rifle Brigade said to me afterwards that he trusted the staff did not mean to make a hobby of these knock-about-turns on parade, because if they did it would undermine ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... lord Lascelles and divers other, about an eight hundred men of arms and twelve hundred archers. The third battle had the king: he had seven hundred men of arms and two thousand archers. Then the king leapt on a hobby,[1] with a white rod in his hand, one of his marshals on the one hand and the other on the other hand: he rode from rank to rank desiring every man to take heed that day to his right and honour. He ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... set him off at a tangent; 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... double Line of Fate is clearly marked, especially if they incline towards different mounts of the hand, such a mark indicates that two careers would be carried out simultaneously—one perhaps as a hobby and the other as ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... it. The wise thought it very foolish, but the many thought it very funny, and the idle amused themselves by chalking it upon walls, or scribbling it upon monuments. But "all that's bright must fade," even in slang. The people grew tired of their hobby, and "There he goes with his eye out!" was heard no more in its ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... on to describe a second tableau, where the same person in the blue dress was in a room all hung over with plates, along with a gentleman whom she described very accurately. He was the occupant of the house where the patient lay, and, having a hobby for old china, had turned his dining-room into a sort of crockery shop by hanging it ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... answered airily. "I ran it more by way of a hobby than for any other reason, and my children persuaded me to sell it. They thought I was overtaxing ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... critters has to bear without complainin' through this vale uv tears. The only thing that bothered him wuz the fear that mebbe he wouldn't live to see the last volyume,—to tell the truth, this kind uv got to be his hobby, and I've heern him talk 'bout it many a time settin' round the stove at the tarvern 'nd squirtin' tobacco juice at the sawdust box. His wife, Hattie, passed away with the yaller janders the winter W come, and all that seemed to reconcile Leander to ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... on the table with his thin, taper fingers, like a man trying to recall a tune. He had, indeed, made a hobby of such fables, and he was not without vanity about his artistic touch ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... eighties, with a sort of yellow oilskin paper on the walls. At the top of the stairs he hesitated between four doors. Which of them was Timothy's? And he listened. A sound, as of a child slowly dragging a hobby-horse about, came to his ears. That must be Timothy! He tapped, and a door was opened by Smither, very ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "Ah, it's all very well for you to laugh at me because I have failed over my hobby; but I feel I'm right all the same, and I tell you ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... of men who, in their enthusiasm for some special science, art, or hobby, have quite lost the moral sense which would restrain them from indulging it illegitimately; and I conjecture that here, at last, is an instance of such an one. He probably guesses the way my thoughts travel, for he stands up and solemnly asserts that he has a distinctly justifiable ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... by George Farquhar. Thomas viscount Aimwell and his friend Archer (the two beaux), having run through all their money, set out fortune-hunting, and come to Lichfield as "master and man." Aimwell pretends to be very unwell, and as lady Bountiful's hobby is tending the sick and playing the leech, she orders him to be removed to her mansion. Here he and Dorinda (daughter of lady Bountiful) fall in love with each other, and finally marry. Archer falls in love with Mrs. Sullen, the wife of squire Sullen, who had been married fourteen months but agreed ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... an American 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
... bonds could be issued, 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 ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... had a little hobby-horse, And it was dapple grey; Its head was made of pea-straw, Its tail was ...
— Denslow's Mother Goose • Anonymous
... never conquered her jealousy; but she learnt to conceal it, and thus to keep the peace; the children became gradually a source of mutual interest that was a real tie between them; in fact it grew in time into a positive hobby and a cause of so much pride and satisfaction as to be rather a bore to many of ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... They are all specimens of the upper part of the middle class. They have been all liberally educated. They all lie under the restraints of the same sacred profession. They are all young. They are all in love. Not any one of them has any hobby-horse, to use the phrase of Sterne. Not one has any ruling passion, such as we read in Pope. Who would not have expected them to be insipid likenesses of each other? No such thing. Harpagon is not more unlike Jourdain, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... rate that the national president, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, referred to them as the "heavy artillery down in Texas." The Executive Committee of the State Association in session at Austin, on the 23rd authorized Mrs. Cunningham and Mrs. Hortense Ward to call upon the new Governor, William P. Hobby, and ask that he submit a bill for Primary suffrage for women at the special session of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... the most promising political careers in the United States." "Senator Moyese had long been accustomed to search the mountains in autumn for seeds and roots of specimen flowers for his herbarium, of which he had made a hobby. That reckless disregard of danger for which he was famous, etc., etc." You'll find the salient features of it all in "Who's Who." Pad that out with Mr. Bat Brydges' imagination and devotion; and you will ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... purchase of lands from the Cherokees; and when Wharton, after answering Henry's inquiry as to where he might buy Indian goods, remarked: "It's not possible you mean to enter the Indian trade at this period," Henry laughingly replied: "The wish-world is my hobby horse." "From whence I conclude," adds Wharton, "he has some prospect of making a purchase of the natives, ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... particular influence upon me; but it was also natural to me to attach myself to them. As my mother related, I never as a child went for a ride on my hobby horse without having at parting and on my return kissed my hand to my lady represented by a doll" (p. 24). It is superfluous to add that this lady was no other than his mother. Also the following passage I think is significant: "I was by nature ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... which leads him in so many novels to treat these desirable attributes as if they were ends and objects of life in themselves. It has also misled him but too often into depicting a world of suicides, ignoring or overlooking a secret hobby, or passion, or chimaera which is the one thing that renders existence endurable to so many of the waifs and strays of life. He takes existence sadly—too sadly, it may well be; but his drabs and greys ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... 'Rose of Death,' 'Conqueror's Road.' They were no kid stuff. Why, yesterday I'd never even have thought of some of the ideas I used in my detective stories, that I published under a nom-de-plume. And my hobby, chemistry; I was pretty good at that. Patented a couple of processes that made me as much money as my writing. You think a thirteen-year-old just dreamed all that up? Or, here; you speak French, don't you?" He switched languages and spoke at some length in good conversational ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... could be enticed. And Janet, piqued, said, "If that's all, I'll have him here in a week." They were an adventurous family, always ready for anything, always on the look-out for new sources of pleasure, full of zest in life. They liked novelties, and hospitality was their chief hobby. They made fun of nearly every body, but ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... from the Pont de la Concorde to the Pont Saint Michel. What he did with these books, so numerous that no man's lifetime would have been long enough to read them, nobody knew, least of all, himself. But this hobby of his amounted to monomania: when he came home at night without bringing a musty quarto with him, he would repeat the saying of Titus, "I have lost a day." His enticing manners, his language, which was a mosaic of every ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... lies in discovering the "hobby" of the person with whom one is conversing, and a good talker always throws out several "feelers" in order to find out the things in which his partner is most interested. You should, therefore, next say to mother, "Don't you think this is a glorious day for a picnic?" to which she ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... thoughts; the ant-queen must have had a wonderfully clear understanding. I remembered the man who placed a white stick in his mouth by which he could make himself and the stick invisible. I thought of sticks as hobby-horses, staves of music or rhyme, of breaking a stick over a man's back, and heaven knows how many more phrases of the same sort relating to sticks, staves, and skewers. All my thoughts rein on skewers, sticks of wood, and staves; and as I am, at last, a poet, and I have ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... has been said, bit. The letters, written in a fine scholarly handwriting, excited his interest extraordinarily. He imagined some dreamer-priest possessed by a singular hobby, searching for things of the spirit by those devious ways he had heard about from time to time, a little mad probably into the bargain. The name Skale sounded to him big, yet he somehow pictured to himself an ascetic-faced man of small stature pursuing in solitude some impossible ideal. ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... whose sense of humor was easily tickled. "She's collecting stuff for her hope chest and I should think biscuit recipes would be just the thing. Do you want to learn to cook, Betty? Esther has a kitchen hobby and rides it ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... 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 ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... these complications more seriously. Oveta Culp Hobby, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, was concerned with the attitude of Congress and the press. She pleaded for more time to see what the Supreme Court would rule on the subject and to study the effect of the conversion to federally operated schools "so that we can feel ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... scholar, but a man of disgraceful life, obtained the appointment to the see, by alienating various estates to the Seymour family, and Merdon was resumed by the Crown. It was then granted to Sir Philip Hobby who had been one of King Henry's privy councillors, and had been sent on an embassy to Portugal, attended by ten gentlemen of his own retinue, wearing velvet coats with ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... would be a difficult trek. You know what the Hellers are like. Still, you used to climb mountains, as a hobby, before you went ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... and scope, and also at the extent to which it had been neglected by teachers. Ever since that time the two questions, How adults should study, and How children should be taught to study, have together been my chief hobby. ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... again sighed heavily. "You seem to think I am a sort of mountebank who makes a hobby of paying court to women. You misjudge me, Myra. True, I have made love to women before, true, many have fallen in love with me and thrown themselves at my head—as you say in ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... regular 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 ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... was out a-huntin' to-day, an' I got away to a place in the wood I'd never seen afore. An' there was an old chalk pit. An' I heerd a sort of a hummin', kind o'. So I got off my hobby, an' I went right quiet to the pit, an' I looked down. Well, what should there be but the funniest little black thing yew iver set eyes on. An' what was that a dewin' on, but that had a little spinnin' wheel, an' that were a-spinnin' ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... agriculture, was Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance, which has for its background an idealized picture of the community life; whose heroine, Zenobia, has touches of Margaret Fuller; and whose hero, with his hobby of prison reform, was a type of the one-idea'd philanthropists that abounded in such an environment. Hawthorne's attitude was always in part one of reserve and criticism, an attitude which is apparent in the reminiscences of Brook Farm in his ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... another stamp was the then accountant, John Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, nor in good truth cared one fig about the matter. He "thought an accountant the greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest accountant in it." Yet John was not without his hobby. The fiddle relieved his vacant hours. He sang, certainly, with other notes than to the Orphean lyre. He did, indeed, scream and scrape most abominably. His fine suite of official rooms in Threadneedle-street, which, without any thing very ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... are so spiritualized by the unusual light, that they seem to lose their actual substance, and become things of intellect. Nothing is too small or too trifling to undergo this change, and acquire dignity thereby. A child's shoe; the doll, seated in her little wicker carriage; the hobby-horse;—whatever, in a word, has been used or played with, during the day, is now invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present as by daylight. Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this morning, Hobart caught a glimpse of a colored man coming toward us. It suggested to him a hobby which he rides now every day, and he commenced his oration by saying, in his declamatory way: "The negro is the coming man." "Yes," I interrupted, "so I see, and he appears to have his hat full of peaches;" and so ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... grog awaits him. This is the time when the bookseller arrives. They play a game of chess or talk about books. At half-past ten the second violin from the Dramatic Theatre drops in. He is an old Pole who, after 1864, escaped to Sweden, and now makes a living by his former hobby. Both the Pole and the bookseller are over fifty, but they get on with the schoolmaster as if ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... living. But each letter had terminated with a prayer, remarkably near to a command, that he, Paul Howard Alexis, should remain in England. So Paul stayed in London, where he indulged to the full a sadly mistaken hobby. This man had, as we have seen, that which is called a crank, or a loose screw, according to the fancy of the speaker. He had conceived the absurd idea of benefiting his fellow-beings, and of turning into that mistaken channel the surplus wealth ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... 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
... champion of popular sovereignty, but at the same time fully committed himself to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, whatever it might be; and after that decision had been given, and, in effect, against his particular hobby, he defended it, while vainly striving to vindicate his consistency. But the Lecompton swindle was so revolting a mockery of the right of the people of Kansas, that his own Democratic constituents would not endorse it, and he was obliged, contrary to ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... gardener," said Lady Cressage. "He's a magician; he can do what he likes with plants. It's rather a hobby of mine—or used to be—and I never ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... said the Professor parried with bows, and drew enchantments from his cupboard of wonder to replenish the bowl on the table. And Rodriguez saw that he was in the clutch of a collector, one who having devoted all his days to a hobby will exhibit his treasures to the uttermost, and that the stars that magic knows were no less to the Professor than all the whatnots that a man collects and insists on showing to whomsoever enters his house. He feared some terrible journey, perhaps ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... 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
... his hobby," suggested Ainsworth; "that's the only way to choke Bently off. Where's Fenton? I never knew him quiet for so long ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... tying them up in loose bundles with the quill ends level, that they might dry, and carefully carrying them into the room used for storing feathers, eggs, and such curiosities as were collected from time to time; Dyke having displayed a hobby for bringing home stones, crystals, birds' eggs, and any attractive piece of ore, that he found during his travels. These were ranged in an old case, standing upright against the corrugated iron wall, where, a few boardings nailed across ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... the unforeseen advantages produced by accidents, some of which have occasionally had not a little to do with determining the future position in life of many eminent men. Prevented from pursuing the sphere in this world they had intended, compulsory leisure compelled them to adopt some hobby as a recreation, in which, unconsciously, their ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... his gifts, and sent for him to Schwetzingen to play before him. 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
... 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 scheme of ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... going to mount your dearly beloved hobby of heredity I am not going to argue with you, David, man. But as for the matter of urging me to hasten and marry me a wife, why don't you"—It was on Eric's lips to say, "Why don't you get married to a girl ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... surcoat lined with yellow. Beside the piper was another minstrel, similarly attired, and provided with a tabor. Lastly came one of the main features of the pageant, and which, together with the Fool, contributed most materially to the amusement of the spectators. This was the Hobby-horse. The hue of this, spirited charger was a pinkish white, and his housings were of crimson cloth hanging to the ground, so as to conceal the rider's real legs, though a pair of sham ones dangled ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Sam a little vaguely. The resemblance had not struck him. It seemed a silly hobby, and rough on ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... seems 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 Romantic Tales(1808), ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... have his hobby, however, and it is a great deal to ride only one hobby at a time. For the present we disavow all minor ones. We forbear giving our pet arguments in defence of animal food, and in opposition to tobacco, coffee, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... thriller.... One of Tracey's hobbies—" she broke off to explain, "—is collecting old-fashioned thrillers, like the Nick Carter, Diamond King Brady, Buffalo Bill and Deadwood Dick paper-bound books. Of course he didn't take up that hobby until a lot of other rich men had done it first. There was never anybody less original than poor Tracey.... Well, Flora gave up her place to Janet, and again played anagrams with Johnny, Peter taking his original place at our table. ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... man write never so well, there are now-a-days a sort of persons they call critics, that, egad, have no more wit in them than so many hobby-horses: but they'll laugh at you, Sir, and find fault, and censure things, that, egad, I'm sure they are not able to do themselves; a sort of envious persons, that emulate the glories of persons of parts, and think to build their fame by calumniation ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... notably Richelieu and Louis XIV., tempted the noblesse up to Paris, that they might become mere courtiers, instead of powerful country gentlemen; how those who remained behind were only the poor hobereaux, little hobby-hawks among the gentry, who considered it degradation to help in governing the parish, as their forefathers had governed it, and lived shabbily in their chateaux, grinding the last farthing out of their tenants, that they might spend it in town during the winter. No wonder that with such an aristocracy, ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... be no big ones. My dear fellow, we know little nations are your hobby, but surely office should ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... after the publication of his work, and now that he is dead and gone, it cannot do much harm to his memory to say that his time might have been much better employed in weightier labors. He, however, was apt to ride his hobby his own way; and though it did now and then kick up the dust a little in the eyes of his neighbors, and grieve the spirit of some friends, for whom he felt the truest deference and affection; yet his errors and follies are remembered "more in sorrow ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... stud, 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, tandem, equitation, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... it is quite a hobby of his," here interposed Mr. Winston. "He makes lengthy speeches on the subject, and has published two of them in pamphlet ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... was, in fact, a walking De Beers mine. For his personal adornment, more than a million dollars' worth of gems did relay duty. He had scores of sets, every one of them fit for a king of diamonds. It was a curious hobby for a great, strong man, yet he was not alone in his love of and sheer affection for things beautiful. Not love of display or desire to attract notice to himself had prompted him to collect diamonds, but the mere pleasure of ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... has become customary of late to call Count Tolstoy "crazy," or "not quite right in the head," etc. The inevitable conclusion of any one who talks much with him is that he is nothing of the sort; but simply a man with a hobby, or an idea. His idea happens to be one which, granting that it ought to be adopted by everybody, is still one which is very difficult of adoption by anybody,—peculiarly difficult in his own case. And it is an ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... 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 ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... that in its swing fell just short of the hand, and was made of lignum vitae, or rather, as the poet termed it, mortis." Examen. p. 572. The following is the first stanza of "The Protestant Flail; an excellent new song, to the tune of, Lacy's Maggot, or the Hobby Horse." It is thus labelled by Luttrell: "A bonny thing, 14 ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... has a minute to himself, he never takes his eyes from his tablets; he's smart too, and has the right kind of stuff in him, even if he is crazy about birds. I've had to kill three of his linnets already. I told him that a weasel had gotten them, but he's found another hobby, now he paints all the time. He's left the marks of his heels on his Greek already, and is doing pretty well with his Latin, although his master's too easy with him; won't make him stick to one thing. He comes to me to get me to give him something ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... take much? My hobby is rare coins. With the missing curios, I guess they've got about two ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... hobby of concocting weird dishes was a standing joke at Enterprises, and already had led to such dubious triumphs as armadillo ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... of the procession there was talk between the two students who had in charge the little grey horse-one to lead and one to flog. " Billie," said one, " it now becomes necessary to lose this hobby into the hands of some of the other fellows. Whereby we will gain opportunity to pay homage to the great Nora. Why, you egregious thick-head, this is the chance of a life-time. I'm damned if I'm going to tow this beast ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... Mr. Mifflin was well astride his hobby: he had started to tell the children about Robin Hood, but I had the sense to give him a wink. We had to be getting along or surely Andrew might be on us. So while Mifflin was putting Pegasus into the shafts again I picked out seven or eight books that I thought ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... enthusiasts have subsided renders the question easier to ask than to answer. I believe it would have been found that most of these persons were of ardent temperament and of considerable imagination, and that their history would show that Perkinism was not the first nor the last hobby-horse they rode furiously. Many of them may very probably have been persons of more than common talent, of active and ingenious minds, of versatile powers and various acquirements. Such, for instance, was the estimable man to whom I have repeatedly referred as a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... conducted on military principles, it was not peculiarly the school of the soldier. The principal believed in discipline; this was his hobby; and he believed that he could best secure system and order by adopting military routine. His success justified his theory. He had more applicants than ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... street behind the Kazan Cathedral. I did not know very much about him except that he was a very wealthy merchant, who had made his money by selling cheap sweets to the peasant. He lived, I knew, an immoral and self-indulgent life, and his hobby was the quite indiscriminate collection of modern Russian paintings, his walls being plastered with innumerable works by Benois, Somoff, Dobeijinsky, Yakofflyeff, and Lanceray. He had also two Serovs, a fine Vrubel, and ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... deformed man, who had been behind me, and I knocked down several books which he was carrying. I remember that as I picked them up I observed the title of one of them, "The Origin of Tree Worship," and it struck me that the fellow must be some poor bibliophile who, either as a trade or as a hobby, was a collector of obscure volumes. I endeavoured to apologize for the accident, but it was evident that these books which I had so unfortunately maltreated were very precious objects in the eyes of their owner. With a snarl of contempt he turned upon his ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his Chamberlain, called Master Vaughan, which bade the Lord of Granthuse welcome. Then the King had him and all his company into the little Park, where he made him have great sport; and there the King made him ride on his own horse, on a right fair hobby, the which the King gave him." The King's dinner was "ordained" in the Lodge, Windsor Park. After dinner they hunted again, and the King showed his guest his garden and vineyard of pleasure. Then "the Queen did ordain a great banquet in her ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Selm would labour like any of his crew over a net coming in or in an emergency, but he ate off silver and slept between sheets of exceedingly fine linen. Though a sailor, almost one might say a fisherman, he was always Monsieur le Prince and though his hobby lay in the depths of the sea his intellect did not lie there too. Politics, Literature and Art travelled with him as mind companions, whilst in the flesh he often managed to bring off with him on his "outlandish ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Palliser himself, had expected that he would carry his Bill in the present session. It was brought forward as a trial of strength; and for such a purpose decimal coinage was as good a subject as any other. It was Mr. Palliser's hobby, and he was gratified at having this further opportunity of ventilating it. When in power, he had not succeeded in carrying his measure, awed, and at last absolutely beaten, by the infinite difficulty encountered ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... spines which fall from them, as to increase its value in the course of some years eight or tenfold. The Duke was buried in a coffin made of larch-wood! This sounds as if the merits of the larch-tree had been indeed a hobby with him, but when one comes to enumerate them one does not wonder that a man should feel his life very usefully devoted to establishing so valuable a tree in his native country, and that the pains and pride it brought ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... hope to coin spare hours into dollars and cents, or others who must make a hobby pay its own expenses at least, an important question is, what is ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... beforehand, nephew, of my granddaughter's temper," said the General, with a deep sigh, without raising his head to look at me. "Once she's got an idea into her head, there is no opposing her; she'll drive through anything, like a man on his hobby-horse; she never reasons." ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... sort. It is a hobby of mine never to waste gas or electricity, and I remember distinctly stopping to put out the light after I had ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... 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, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... which he had gathered were these: M. Destange, who was in failing health and anxious for rest, had retired from business and was living among the architectural books which it had been his hobby to collect. He had no interest left in life beyond the handling and examining ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... 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 'live' ITS site at its computer ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... and money are both lacking, and horticulture is not a hobby, divide what sum you are prepared to spend on your little garden in two. Lay out half in making good soil, and spend the rest on a limited range of hardy plants. If mother earth is well fed, and if you have got her deep ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Franklins and Rumfords of the succeeding century. The son of a Polish exile of German extraction, Hartlib had settled in England about 1627. He found the country behindhand both economically and socially, and with benign fervour applied himself to its regeneration. Agriculture was his principal hobby, and he effected much towards its improvement in England, rather however by editing the unpublished treatises of Weston and Child than by any direct contributions of his own. Next among the undertakings to which he devoted himself ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... over, Jo felt so completely disillusioned, that she sat down in a corner to recover herself. Mr. Bhaer soon joined her, looking rather out of his element, and presently several of the philosophers, each mounted on his hobby, came ambling up to hold an intellectual tournament in the recess. The conversations were miles beyond Jo's comprehension, but she enjoyed it, though Kant and Hegel were unknown gods, the Subjective and Objective unintelligible ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Sutter 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 ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... tell," remarked the lieutenant. "Men with a hobby do strange things. You'd better ride along with me to headquarters. I'd like to introduce you to General Funston. He's a man after your own hearts. You know how he went out and captured Aguinaldo when he was ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... hear that story about the mountain lions?" queried Shadow, reproachfully. Story-telling was his hobby, and it had often been said by his friends that he would rather spin a ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... front of the house hummed with the revolving wheels, and echoed the chatter of half the fashionable world bound for the Bath or the great western port of Bristol, the south front reflected the taste of that Lady Hertford who had made these glades and trim walks her principal hobby. ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... known some stupid and unpoetical mountaineers; and, since I have been dismounted from my favourite hobby, I think I have met some similar specimens among the humbler class of tourists. There are persons, I fancy, who "do" the Alps; who look upon the Lake of Lucerne as one more task ticked off from their memorandum book, and count up the list of summits visible from the Goernergrat ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... 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 ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... they add precious souvenirs to their rich collections, the find of an old passage way here, there the view when the light is quite right from one precise spot, say, on Waterloo Bridge. Sometimes, indeed, they write books about their hobby, more or less useful to the neophyte: as "A Wayfarer's London," or "A Wanderer in London," or "Ghosts of Piccadilly," or some such thing; but more frequently they are of the highest type of amateur, the connoisseur who will ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... that summer was the opening of a Grand International Exhibition—the hobby of the Governor of the town—Baron de Pretis, and Burton thus refers to it in a letter written to Mr. Payne, 5th August (1882). "We arrived here just in time for the opening of the Exhibition, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... doctrine and the new liturgy. The lady Mary alone continued to adhere to the mass, and refused to admit the established modes of worship. When pressed and menaced on this head, she applied to the emperor, who, using his interest with Sir Philip Hobby, the English ambassador, procured her a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Hobby—whose husband resided at Bisham Abbey, a fine old place, maintained in admirable repair, near Windsor—was a terrible disciplinarian, and there is an ugly story of her having whipped a wretched son ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... the letter through twice before its meaning dawned on him. Miss Aleyn, an elderly and very eccentric maiden lady, was their near neighbour, and a friend of his mother's. Her hobby was curio-collecting, and she lived in perpetual dread of having her treasures stolen. In fact, judging by the energy and ingenuity she displayed in hunting for them, one might well imagine the old lady ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... writer meant on propelling rocket planes. I have experimented on rocket ships for the past three years and can give some data on these as to the construction of models (for when I say ships I really mean model airplanes). I have had this as my hobby for the past four and a half years, and can give extensive information on model building. I specialize in models powered by power other than rubber; and I took second place at the Atlantic City Tournament held in October by the National Play-ground ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... and I afterwards found out (every man having his hobby) that the idiosyncrasy of this officer's disposition had led him to the practice of neutralising the males of any species of bird or beast, in order to render them ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Notting Hill there was a certain more or less inexplicable addition to his delight. The wretched navvies and sandwich-men who carried the colours of Bayswater or South Kensington, engaged merely for the day to satisfy the Royal hobby, slouched into the room with a comparatively hang-dog air, and a great part of the King's intellectual pleasure consisted in the contrast between the arrogance of their swords and feathers and the meek misery of their faces. But these Notting Hill ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... afraid of," he explained quickly. "It is only the ordinary wind of the prairies. It ain't a cyclone. Cyclones nevah come this way, neah to the forks of two rivers wheah we ah," and waxing eloquent on this, his hobby, he began telling her of the great and beautiful and prosperous city which was sometime to be built on this spot; perhaps the very dugout in which they sat would form its center. He talked enthusiastically of the tall steepled temples that would be erected, of the schools and ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... 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 ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... made of them! and may make of them yet," thought he; "but some there are, who never can contrive, as other some cleverly do, to ride their hobby-horses to good purpose and good effect;—now Beauclerc's hobbies, I plainly see, will always run away with him headlong, cost him dear certainly, and, may be, leave him in ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth |
