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Pastime   /pˈæstˌaɪm/   Listen
Pastime

noun
1.
A diversion that occupies one's time and thoughts (usually pleasantly).  Synonyms: interest, pursuit.  "His main pastime is gambling" , "He counts reading among his interests" , "They criticized the boy for his limited pursuits"






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"Pastime" Quotes from Famous Books



... and, to my astonishment, Mr. Uxbridge rode past. I was glad he did not know me. I watched him as he rode slowly down the road, deep in thought. He let drop the bridle, and the horse stopped, as if accustomed to the circumstance, and pawed the ground gently, or yawed his neck for pastime. Mr. Uxbridge folded his arms and raised his head to look seaward. It seemed to me as if he were about to address the jury. I had dropped so entirely from my observance of the landscape that I jumped when he resumed the bridle and turned his horse ...
— Lemorne Versus Huell • Elizabeth Drew Stoddard

... depths of my heart I despised him. I had not then learned to hate the sin with all my heart, and yet the sinner love. To me he was the incarnation of social meanness and vice. And just as I felt I acted. We young folks had met at a social gathering, and were engaged in a pastime in which we occasionally clasped hands together. Some of these plays I heartily disliked, especially when there was romping and promiscuous kissing. During the play Frank Miller's hand came in contact with mine and he pressed it. I can ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... people? Have we legions already drawn from their numbers, disciplined, and accustomed to our modes of warfare? Truly, this war with Rome seems to be approached much as if it were but some passing show of arms, some holiday pastime. But the gods grant that none of ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... "He never gave himself the pastime of going to parties where there was drinking and card-playing, having always had a dislike ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... and old Brooks himself going over to Kate Bell's for his midday waters with a daundering step as if he had no special object, and might as readily be found making for the quay or the coffee-house. The children were noisy in the playground, the boys playing at port-the-helm, a foolish pastime borrowed in its parlance and its rule from the seafarers who frequented the harbour, and the girls more sedately played peeveral-al and I dree I dree! dropped it, their voices in a sweat unison chanting, yet with a sorrow in ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... influence a man's public opinions. Besides, the principle upon which the advocates for the sacredness of private property proceed, is erroneous. Every one will allow that, in absolute monarchies, where war is more properly the pastime of kings than the desire of subjects, non-combatants ought to be dealt with as humanely as possible. Not so, how ever, in States governed by popular assemblies. By compelling the constituents to experience the real hardships and miseries of warfare, you will compel the representatives ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... and boiling women, dashing out the brains of many a cherub boy and prattling girl, was the pleasing and satisfactory pastime with which Pope Gregory, Catherine de Medicis, and her congenial son gladdened their Christian hearts. The blood of their victims still cries to us from the ground of their Golgotha; for on the south side of the town there is a large green field, called Le Champ des Huguenots. The ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... should, Mr. Daney, we should have no other alternative but to deny it." Elizabeth was speaking. She still wore her impish glacial smile. "As a usual thing, we are opposed to fibbing on the high moral ground that it is not a lady's pastime, but in view of the perfectly appalling results that would follow our failure to fib in this particular case, I'm afraid we'll have to join hands, Mr. Daney, and prove Nan Brent a liar. Naturally, we count on your help. As a result of his conversation with ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... welcome and inexhaustible resources to a girl whose genius deserved the richest and most sedulous cultivation, and whose peculiar situation, independent of her studious predisposition, rendered reading a pastime to her rather than a task. Lady Annabel watched the progress of her daughter with lively interest, and spared no efforts to assist the formation of her principles and her taste. That deep religious feeling which was the characteristic of the mother had been carefully ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... eruption. On a sudden, a shot or two, followed by loud voices and laughter reminded him he had promised, at that hour, and in that sequestered place, to decide a bet respecting pistol-shooting, to which the titular Lord Etherington, Jekyl, and Captain MacTurk, to whom such a pastime was peculiarly congenial, were parties as well as himself. The prospect this recollection afforded him, of vengeance on the man whom he regarded as the author of his sister's wrongs, was, in the present state of his mind, too tempting to be relinquished; and, setting ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... had to prove it on every other girl, and again on Martin one at a time, and he on them again. And in this delicious pastime the afternoon wore by, and evening fell, and they came ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... and wine and a girl like one of the angels (If they exist), And find a clear stream singing near its birth and a bed of moss (If moss exists), For loving and singing to the dancers and drinking and forgetting hell (If hell exists), Because this is a pastime better than paradise (If ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers

... more active ship than the Wright. In ordinary seas, walking was a matter of difficulty, and when the wind freshened to a gale locomotion ceased to be a pastime. Frequently I wedged myself into my berth with books and cigar boxes. On the first day out, my dog (for I traveled with a dog) was utterly bewildered, and evidently thought himself where he did not belong. After falling a dozen times upon his side, he succeeded in learning to keep ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... have been informed by an acquaintance of his, a Rebel soldier who has known him from early life, has always been a sort of guerilla—deserting from his father's house in mere boyhood—fighting duels as a pastime—roving the country far and wide in search of pleasure or profit—a thorough student of human nature and of the country in which he operates—bold and daring to a fault and romantic in his make—and finding now his chief delight in the adventures ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... B. Fry, who was consulted by the inventor on the subject. The game of spinning, throwing and catching the diabolo was rapidly elaborated in various directions, both as an exercise of skill in doing tricks, and in "diabolo tennis" and other ways as an athletic pastime. From Paris, Ostend and the chief French seaside resorts, where it became popular in 1906, its vogue spread in 1907 so that in France and England it became the fashionable "rage" among both ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... his mode of life. Consequently one observes that they have altogether withdrawn, in public at any rate, from every sort of pleasures. One sees no longer Cardinals in masquerade or on horseback, nor driving with women about Rome for pastime, as the custom was of late; but the utmost they do is to go alone in close coaches. Banquets, diversions, hunting parties, splendid liveries and all the other signs of outward luxury have been abolished; the more so that now there is at Court ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... all ages been a pastime of noble minds to try to depict a perfect state of society. Forty years before Shakespeare's birth, Sir Thomas More published his "Utopia" to the world. Bacon intended to do the same thing in the "New Atlantis," but never completed the work, while Sir Philip Sidney gives ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... good to me when I was a boy. She dried my mop of hair for me once so my stepmother would not know I'd been in swimming. Tell her I sent the cream to her. Say, you were right about Miss M'ri making the best cream in the country. It used to be a chronic pastime with her. That's how I guessed what you had when you said you came from there. Whenever there was a picnic or a surprise party in the country she always furnished the ice cream. Isn't she ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... are not known at all. Mr. Whymper's account is the only authentic one. I will import the chief portion of it into this book, partly because of its intrinsic interest, and partly because it gives such a vivid idea of what the perilous pastime of Alp-climbing is. This was Mr. Whymper's NINTH attempt during a series of years, to vanquish that steep and stubborn pillar or rock; it succeeded, the other eight were failures. No man had ever accomplished the ascent before, though the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... since man proposes and God disposes, the posts were either careless, or God ordained it thus; for suddenly the enemy rushed upon our men, who could not unite, as they were by that time scattered through the forest. The enemy, having caught them off their guard, made a pastime of it, killing twenty-six men, and carrying off arms, powder, balls, and fuses. I regard that event as the greatest of all our losses. Among those of our men killed there by the enemy was Captain Lopez Suarez, a fine soldier. Our men were not disheartened by these reverses, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... to have mentioned in the beginning, that, among several other qualifications, the prince was fond of collecting and breeding mice, which being an harmless pastime, none of his counsellors thought proper to dissuade him from; he therefore kept a great variety of these pretty little animals in the most beautiful cages, enriched with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls, and other precious stones. Thus he innocently spent four hours each day in contemplating ...
— The Story of the White Mouse • Unknown

... ready. In his heart he bare the beautiful maiden that as yet he had not seen: the which spake in secret kind words also of him. When the youths tilted in the courtyard, Kriemhild, the high princess, looked down at them from her window; nor, at that time, desired she better pastime. Neither had he asked better, had he known that his heart's dear one gazed upon him: the fairest thing on earth had he deemed it to behold her eyes. When he stood there amidst of the heroes in the tilt-yard, as ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown

... much farther the bidding would have gone will never be known, for a vicious little bird must needs tell the Colonel all about it. That gentleman happened to be engaged in his favourite (proclaiming) pastime; he sat ruminating on the high price of coal, and evolving schemes to bring wood back to its proper level. The latter article was what the poorer classes used as fuel. The Colonel had no scruples ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... ludicrous to those who could not but think, as I did, of the very little matter as to which the contest had been raised;—just a game of cricket which two sets of boys had been playing, and which should have been regarded as no more than an amusement,—as a pastime, by which to refresh themselves between their work. But they regarded it as though a great national combat had been fought, and the Britannulists looked upon themselves as though they had been victorious against England. It was absurd to see Jack as he was carried back ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope

... abroad with hair erect and backs curved, to exchange greetings with each other in wary defiance of dogs; kittens sprawled in the sunshine, and made frantic efforts to achieve the impossible feat of catching their own shadows, varying the pastime with more successful, though arduous, attempts at their own tails; dogs bounded and danced, chiefly on their hind legs, round their loved companion man (including woman); juvenile dogs chased, tumbled over, barked at, and gnawed each other with amiable fury, wagging ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... nights, Mind, by way of pastime, used, out of dried, wild chestnuts, to carve little cats, bears, and other beasts, and this with so much art that these little dainty toys were shortly in no less request than his drawings. It is a pity that insects, such as frequently exist in the interior of chestnuts, have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various

... pickets, and we had a similar one to protect ours. The main lines were, generally, in easy cannon range, in most places within musket range, and the pickets of the two armies were, for the most part, in speaking distance, and the men often indulged in talking, for pastime. Except in rare instances the sentinels did not fire on each other by day, but sometimes at night firing was kept up by the Confederates at intervals to prevent desertion. During the last months of the siege, circulars were issued by Grant offering to pay ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... many times I fell, but it was pretty nearly as often as the "Professor" of the wily art took hold of me. Before the first lesson was over, falling became more than a mere pastime with me, it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various

... result. It caused Viola to turn and transfix the offender with a stare so haughty that he abruptly diverted his attention to the upper north-east corner of the court-house, where, fortunately for him, a pair of pigeons had just alighted and were engaged in the interesting pastime of ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... been before, received all his commissions and warrants by the name of master of the king's pastimes. Which gentleman so well supplied his office, both in show of sundry sights and devices of rare inventions, and in act of divers interludes and matters of pastime played by persons, as not only satisfied the common sort, but also were very well liked and allowed by the council, and other of skill in the like pastimes; but best of all by the young king himself, as appeared by his princely liberality in ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... playmate is stretching beside, As loath to be vanquished in love or in pride, While upward he glances his eyeball of jet, Half dreading thy fleetness may distance him yet. Ah, Marco, poor Marco—our pastime to-day Were reft of one pleasure ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... of cliffs is a very dangerous pastime. How true the French adage—"C'est plus facile de glisser sur la gazon que sur la glace." But still nothing can come of it; for if Lady Jane be not false, I must consider myself an ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... the history of the gambler? Lured by bad company, he finds his way into a place where honest men ought never to go. He sits down to his first game only for pastime and the desire of being thought sociable. The players deal out the cards. They unconsciously play into Satan's hands, who takes all the tricks, and both the players' souls for trumps—he being a sharper at any game. A slight stake is ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... into the N.E. trade winds the crew settled down to a daily routine during the first hour or two of their watch below in the daytime, of making, mending and washing their clothes. Some never got beyond this, or making mats, but there were men who varied their pastime by carving models of vessels, making wood sails or rigging, and fitting them out in every detail. This work was done with great skill and neatness. Those that could read and were fond of it gave a share of their time to that. There were others who worked hard at learning navigation, ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... the weight of responsibility kept this rover at home; he might generally be seen on the lower branches of his tree, darting about in perfect silence; but once or twice I saw him actually loitering, a pleasant pastime of which I never suspected ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... hand and tapering fingers of patrician beauty. All this may captivate the fastidious noble; but, to men less artificial in their tastes and habits, could such a woman be better than a statue—and could love, the strongest of human passions, be ever more to her than a short-lived and amusing pastime? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... garden. While the elders talk gardens, the kiddies play in the passage at sliding down the banisters. Having regard to its value in soothing the nerves and stimulating the liver, and to the fact that it is an indoor pastime within the reach of high and low, I never understand why banister-sliding has not become more popular. I should imagine that it would be an uproariously successful innovation at any smart country house, during the long evenings, and the first hostess who has the courage to introduce ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... Despite the man's optimism he could not believe it wise to allow tiny tots like that to play with such a huge, clumsy animal. He was sure that their mother would be horrified if she knew it. He loved children, and felt that it was madness to allow these babies to continue their dangerous pastime. ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... one or two boards too many, hoping that he would give him what was over, or, at least, something for the suggestion. He is said to have followed a man who was chewing mastic (a sort of gum, chewed, like betel, by Orientals as a pastime) for a whole mile, thinking he was perhaps eating food, intending, if so, to ask him for some. When the youths of the town jeered and taunted him, he told them there was a wedding at such a house, in ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... a threefold embrace on a slippery stair was hardly a safe pastime, and before Jasper had time to utter more than' Holloa there! take care!' there descended suddenly on him an avalanche of little girls, 'knocking him off his feet, so that all promiscuously rolled down two or three steps ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... "Ah!... yes... M. Bombonnel, the man who hunts panthers." Said Tartarin, with some disdain. "Do you know him?" Asked the little gentleman. "Ti!... Pardi!... To be sure I know him, we have hunted together more than twenty times." "You hunt panthers also M. Tartarin?" "Occasionally, as a pastime." Said Tartarin casually, and raising his head with a heroic gesture which went straight to the hearts of the two Cocottes, he added "They cannot be compared to lions." "One could say," Hazarded the photographer, "That ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... the chief who had captured him gave him a pair of moccasons to protect his lacerated feet. When they encamped at night, they prepared to burn him alive, stripped him naked, tied him to a tree, and gathered dry wood to pile about him. A sudden shower of rain interrupted their pastime; but when it was over they began again, and surrounded him with a circle of brushwood which they set on fire. As they were yelling and dancing their delight at the contortions with which he tried to avoid the rising flames, Marin, hearing ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... bloom, High as the highest peak of Furness fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells: In truth the prison unto which we doom Ourselves no prison is: and hence for me, In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground; Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be) Who have felt the weight of too much liberty, Should find brief solace there, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... alighting for a generation or more, the drive passes to an old-fashioned carriage-house, in which are the great family sleigh and a light and gayly painted cutter, revealing that the home is not devoid of the young life to which winter's most exhilarating pastime is so dear. A quaint corn-crib is near, its mossy posts capped with inverted tin pans much corroded by rust. These prevent prowling rats and mice from climbing up among the golden treasures. Still further beyond are the gray old barn and stables, facing ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... grand as you please. I never dared speak to him until he spoke to me; but used to sit quietly enough sharpening bolts or twisting bowstrings, or cleaning his Pistols, or furbishing up his Hanger and Belt, or suchlike boyish pastime-labour. He was careful to burn every paper that he Discarded after taking it from the Valise; but once, and once only, a scrap remained unconsumed on the hearth, the which, with my ape-like curiosity of half-a-score summers, I must needs spell over, although ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... of human life, which is chess, with variety and uncertainty many million times increased? It is prudent, therefore, to say little of the laws which govern the course of human history, to avoid, except for pastime, the discussion of tendencies and movements, and to speak chiefly of men and books. If an author can be exhibited as the effect of certain causes (and I do not deny that some authors can plausibly be so exhibited) he loses his virtue as an author. He thought of himself as a cause, a surprising ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... as long as he remained standing within the field, he was open to an attack. No one struck with the hand, but all manner of tripping with legs and feet and butting with the knees was allowed. Altogether it was an exhausting pastime—fully equal to the American game of football and only the young athlete could ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... continues the poet, "would to Heaven that she were only an imaginary personage, and my passion for her only a pastime! Alas! it is a madness which it would be difficult and painful to feign for any length of time; and what an extravagance it would be to affect such a passion! One may counterfeit illness by action, by voice, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... religious tradition, we observe the coexistence of the RATIONAL and the apparently IRRATIONAL elements. The RATIONAL myths are those which represent the gods as beautiful and wise beings. The Artemis of the Odyssey "taking her pastime in the chase of boars and swift deer, while with her the wild wood-nymphs disport them, and high over them all she rears her brow, and is easily to be known where all are fair,"(1) is a perfectly RATIONAL mythic representation of a divine ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... place and season. Our pent-up energies required a vent, and we rushed round like caged animals suddenly loosened. "Gently," cried our good-natured custodian; but we paid little heed to his admonition; our blood was up, and we raced each other until we were wearied of the pastime. ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... to its passion for art, true to its refined love of pleasure; but true also to its petty political intrigues, to its cynical selfishness, to its lack of heroism. For Florence he looked no higher and saw no further than Cosimo had done. If culture was his pastime, the enslavement of the city by bribery and corruption was the hard work of his manhood. As is the case with much Renaissance art, his life was worth more for its decorative detail than for its constructive design. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... that can be traced directly to the war psychology. Robbery and burglary have rapidly increased, and much of this is due to the emotions of boys. The robbing of country banks has grown to be almost a pastime, and often one or more participants in these raids is a ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... books for children, a volume called Verses and a few more verses scattered in the prose, most notably (as being not yet collected) in The Four Men. The general impression is, as we have said, one of confusion and lack of order: verse, the revealing instrument, seems to be to Mr. Belloc a pastime for moments of dispersion, and most of these poems seem to point to intervals of refreshment, periods of a light use of the powers, rather than to the seconds of intense feeling whereof verse, either at the time or later, is ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... becomes easy, however, because it is undertaken in earnest, and then it becomes pleasant; and parents may take a hint from this, when they are afraid to allow letters and learning to wear any form but that of playthings and pastime to their children. In the third volume, Rollo is at work; in the fourth, at play; and the morals of both play and work are as easily and pleasantly insinuated as we have often seen. There is constant occupation in both, and ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott

... classes, without any compunction. He ran off horses, cattle, sheep—in fact, anything that he could utilize. If murder was necessary to the completion of his work, he never for a moment hesitated. Kidnapping, too, was a favourite pastime; but he rarely carried away to his rendezvous any other than the most beautiful of the New Mexican young girls, whom he held in his mountain den until they were ransomed, or subjected to a ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... was seriously uneasy as to the results of her delightful evening, and saw herself condemned to quite a lengthy sojourn in her deserts and a long defensive correspondence, ere she could venture to return to Gondremark. On the other hand, she examined, by way of pastime, the deeds she had received from Otto; and even here saw cause for disappointment. In these troublous days she had no taste for landed property, and she was convinced, besides, that Otto had paid dearer than the farm ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... that said king, which he took so thankfully that he gave to him for his pains an hundred crowns, to him and to his heirs of inheritance to enjoy to that value in land forever, and took such pleasure in it that wheresoever he went, among his precious jewels that book always carried with him for his pastime to look upon, and as much esteemed by him as the richest diamond he had." Moved by patriotic emulation, Lord Morley "translated the said book to that most worthy king, our late sovereign lord of perpetual memory, King Henry the Eighth, who as ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos

... will survive when your eye is no longer bright, and your hand no longer strong, and your foot no longer fleet? How many of them, young woman! when the light is out of your eye, and the beauty and freshness out of your face and figure, when you are no longer able for parties, when it is no longer a pastime to read novels, and when the ballroom is not exactly the place for you,—how many of your pleasures will survive? Young man! how many of yours will last when you can no longer go into dissipation, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... and of candy in particular, is both a useful and a delightful pastime that can be indulged in even by those who are only slightly skilled. In fact, with a certain amount of knowledge of the methods used and a little practice, surprising results can be obtained by the amateur candy maker. Then, too, it is a comparatively simple matter to copy the ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... these memoirs of his eventful life that furnished him pastime and I was employed in reading them, during the two months of our imprisonment in our snow ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds

... and I can see it might lend an ease and certainty to the pastime which our method lacks. But if the woman is got first and sued subsequently, who brings you together? Who sees to the essential preliminaries ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove, The chamber, or refectory, may die; A necessary act incurs no blame. Not so when, held within their proper bounds, And guiltless of offence, they range the air, Or take their pastime in the spacious field. There they are privileged; and he that hunts Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong. The sum is this: If man's convenience, health, Or safety interfere, his rights and claims Are paramount, and ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... idle pastime is to apply letter-based Dissociated Press to a random body of text and {vgrep} the output in hopes of finding an interesting new word. (In the preceding example, 'window sysIWYG' and 'informash' show some promise.) Iterated applications of Dissociated Press usually yield better ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... come from hell in person to shew thee some pastime: sit down, and thou shalt behold the Seven Deadly Sins appear to thee in their ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... to hand they strove and wrestled Stoutly for that pearl of pride, Where mid flame and woe it nestled Down with danger at its side. Yet like boys released from class time, Though the blast destroying blew, There they played and found a pastime While the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... spirits were so misunderstood, and chemical instruments so unprocurable, that it was hard to have any Hermetic thoughts in it;" and he had betaken himself to "anatomical dissections" as the only kind of scientific pastime that Irish conditions favoured. On returning to England, in 1654, he had settled in Oxford, to be in the society of Wilkins, Wallis, Goddard, Ward, Petty, Bathurst, Willis, and other kindred scientific spirits, most of them recently transferred from London ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... remarkable. It turned out that he played football admirably, and except for his rather scornful indolence he might easily have got his blue. He sneered at the popular enthusiasm for games, and was used to say that cricket was all very well for boys but not fit for the pastime of men. (He was then eighteen!) He talked grandiloquently of big-game shooting and of mountain climbing as sports which demanded courage and self-reliance. He seemed, indeed, to like football, but he played it with a brutal savagery which the other ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... prohibited by law the sportsmen of the period turned their attention to dog-fighting, and for this pastime the Bulldogs were specially trained. The chief centres in London where these exhibitions took place were the Westminster Pit, the Bear Garden at Bankside, and the Old Conduit Fields in Bayswater. In order to obtain greater quickness of movement many of the Bulldogs were crossed ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... the troubled season of the Roses, our Poetic literature showed the first signs of a revival, they consisted in a return to the old masters of the fourteenth century. The poetry of Hawes, the learned author of the crabbed "Pastime of Pleasure," exhibits an undeniable continuity with that of Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, to which triad he devotes a chapter of panegyric. Hawes, however, presses into the service of his allegory not only all the Virtues and all ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... broke through Its bloody bond, and saved perhaps some pretty Child, or an aged, helpless man or two— What 's this in one annihilated city, Where thousand loves, and ties, and duties grew? Cockneys of London! Muscadins of Paris! Just ponder what a pious pastime war is. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... practised (for they have their courts, gardens, and yards for the same purpose), when they were all come together and mounted aloft upon their scaffolds and galleries, and in the midst of all their jolity and pastime, all the whole building (not one stick standing) fell down with a most wonderful and fearful confusion. So that either two or three hundred men, women, and children (by estimation), whereof seven were killed dead, some were wounded, ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... Remember, I am a young nobleman; call me profligate—spendthrift—debauchee—anything you will but an Irishman. Don't the Irish refuse beef and mutton, and take to eating each other? What can be said of a people who, to please their betters, practise starvation as their natural pastime, and dramatize hunger to pamper their most affectionate lords and masters, who, whilst the latter witness the comedy, make the performers pay for their tickets? And yet, although the cannibal system flourishes, I fear they find it anything but ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... decent regard for his station, thus unblushingly published his infamy amongst strangers, and this man a would-be patriot, too, and candidate for the Presidential chair, which, it will be remembered, he afterwards obtained. I was told that flogging his negroes was a favourite pastime with this eminently-distinguished general, and that he was by no means liked by his officers or men. His appearance bespoke his tyrannical disposition; and this, coupled with incapacity, there ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... courteous toleration one accords the weaker sex in matters too deep for their inconsequent minds to grasp fully; for even if she was his father's racing partner, she had openly acknowledged that she considered dogs a pastime, and not a life study, which naturally proved her ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

... exhibition of this most cowardly pastime is now prohibited; and the bull-ring was taken up, by order of Mr. Buck, out of this market-place about eight ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various

... stamped the traces of mortality on our pleasures and expectations. Idris, the most affectionate wife, sister and friend, was a tender and loving mother. The feeling was not with her as with many, a pastime; it was a passion. We had had three children; one, the second in age, died while I was in Greece. This had dashed the triumphant and rapturous emotions of maternity with grief and fear. Before this event, the little beings, sprung from herself, the young heirs of her transient life, seemed ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... whose weak hand the guidance of a great nation was entrusted, the weakling who shrunk from every exertion, regained his lost energy whenever hunting was in prospect; he considered this campaign a chase on the grandest scale and as it seemed royal pastime to discharge his arrows at the human beings he had so lately feared, instead of at game, he had obeyed the chief priest's summons and joined the expedition. It had been undertaken by the mandate of the great god Amon, so he had little ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... apparent than during the sojourn of the allied armies there after the battle of Waterloo. It was as good as a play illustrative of national manners and taste, to note how Russian, German, Cossack, and English, hussar, diplomat, and general, found the dish, the pastime, and the observance each most coveted, when that vast city was like a bivouac ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... was famous for wakes, the wakes of Whalley were famous even in Lancashire. The men of the district were in general a hardy, handsome race, of the genuine Saxon breed, and passionately fond of all kinds of pastime, and the women had their full share of the beauty indigenous to the soil. Besides, it was a secluded spot, in the heart of a wild mountainous region, and though occasionally visited by travellers journeying northward, or by others ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "The House that Jack Built," "Park Row," "Devil's Inn," etc. To while away the long nights and cold days, the men had recourse to the soldier's game, "cards." Few ever played for the money that was in it, but more for an amusement and pastime. While almost all played cards, there were very few who could be considered gamblers, or who would take their comrades' money, if they even won it. There would be stakes played for, it is true, on the "credit system" generally, to be evened-up on pay-day. But when that time came around such good ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... as I? Thus on the threshold of the lofty gate 40 They, wrangling, chafed each other, whose dispute The high-born youth Antinoues mark'd; he laugh'd Delighted, and the suitors thus address'd. Oh friends! no pastime ever yet occurr'd Pleasant as this which, now, the Gods themselves Afford us. Irus and the stranger brawl As they would box. Haste—let us urge them on. He said; at once loud-laughing all arose; The ill-clad ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... merely permitted to carry arms, but compelled by law to practise from childhood the use of the bow, and accustomed to consider sword-play and quarter-staff as a necessary part and parcel of education, and the pastime of every leisure hour. The "fiercest nation upon earth," as they were then called, and the freest also, each man of them fought for himself with the self-help and self-respect of a Yankee ranger, and once bidden to do his work, was trusted to carry it out by his own wit as best he could. In ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... abundance of the vanquished, who, in their turn, with their accustomed versatility, submitted patiently, and even cheerfully, to a yoke which, after the first onslaught was over, pressed lightly; the Voizins, to whom fighting was a pastime, bearing no malice, and passing ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous

... my dear Frank?" said the dowager Lady Aveleyn, one day, when a thick fog debarred her son of his usual pastime. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... into a close-meshed bag lying at their feet; they were filled with joy—the joy of once more indulging in a pastime of which they ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... in the possession of a wealthy manufacturer at Lille, who fled from that city on the approach of the Germans, is now in the National Gallery at Stockholm. The Swede is adept at the gentle pastime of ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... theatrical amusements is now very generally consigned to the meditation of debating clubs, and speculative societies of young men under age; with our neighbours it is a weighty subject of inquiry for minds of almost the highest order. With us, the stage is considered as a harmless pastime, wholesome because it occupies the man by occupying his mental, not his sensual faculties; one of the many departments of fictitious representation; perhaps the most exciting, but also the most transitory; sometimes hurtful, generally beneficial, just as the rest are; entitled to no peculiar ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... was a pocket comb, and his kodak, with which he is an expert. He has not only ransacked with his canoe the rivers of America, but has descended the Danube and the Volga. He puts out in his canoe and crosses arms of the sea, as a pastime, makes a tent of his boat if it rains, fighting the desperadoes of all climes with the superstition, for which he is indebted to their imagination for his safety in running phenomenal hazards, that he is a magician. Marco Polo was not so great a traveler or ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... The Baron hastily dismounted under the aged tree, though he was stiff and fatigued, for Hans was now utterly incapable of exertion. His sword quickly glanced in the moonshine—"Time was" said he, "when this had been the very pastime I desired." The murderous animal attacked him with such impetuosity that his well-tried skill failed him, and he was the next moment thrown under its feet. The struggle now became desperate, for the animal had no common foe to contend with. Before it could wound him with its tusks, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various

... yiss! A bressbounder, eh!" Then he gave a half-laugh, and muttered the old formula about "the man who would go to sea for pleasure, going to hell for a pastime!" ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... young nobles. Why should she refuse a kiss when she was asked? Her little mouth would grow neither larger nor smaller for it." But I stood still and wept, and looked on the ground. "Why should I weep?" she asked. Her cousin Clas had a bride of his own already, and only took a little pastime with her, and so she must cure me now ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... oblivious of this pastime of his master. The lash whistled narrowly by his red ears, but it never touched them. In the evening sunlight the Cardinal was a ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... in most cases they are answered in a style too palpably oracular. If the questioners are genuine and want help they get precious little. If it is merely a game, it seems rather a flat one. But the popularity of the pastime continues. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... but I have seen him, nevertheless, and I shall be much surprised if you do not see and hear more of him than you desire before many days are out. That villain does not sail the seas for pastime, you may ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... The youth who decides against the sweet between meals, we say, has good judgment. And we base our commendation on the proved fact that sweets are real fuel, giving abundantly of heat and energy, and are not to be eaten as mere pastime when the body is already fully supplied with high calorie food not yet burned up; that if sweets are eaten at irregular intervals and at the call of appetite, and not earned by an adequate output of physical work, the digestive ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter

... Richard Feverel's uncle, Adrian Harley, "attained that felicitous point of wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools." He was one of the happy few who are really content; for in the corps as Officer Commanding he could indulge continuously in his favourite pastime of hearing his own voice, and as a clerk in orders the pulpit presented admirable opportunities for long talks that brooked no interruptions. In the common room his prolix anecdotes were not encouraged. But in the ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... itself generally detested. Deeply enshrined as it was in many earnest and devout hearts, such as Bunyan's, it was necessarily the religion not of the many, but of the few; it was the religion not of the common herd, but of a spiritual aristocracy. Its stern condemnation of all mirth and pastime, as things in their nature sinful, of which we have so many evidences in Bunyan's own writings; its repression of all that makes life brighter and more joyous, and the sour sanctimoniousness which frowned upon innocent relaxation, had rendered ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... fresh and good, Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... you betray your ignorance in Art matters. Sketching with me is a pastime, not a serious pursuit, (They go on conversing in a lower tone.) No, please, Mr. PODBURY. I'm quite ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various

... no publication extent will furnish a more complete and exhaustive exhibit of the progress of science and the arts in this country for the past twenty-two years than a complete file of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. It is a curious and interesting pastime to compare the condition of the mechanic arts as presented in some of our first volumes with that shown in our more recent ones. During all this time, nearly a quarter of a century, our journal has endeavored to represent the actual condition of our scientific ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... of four, Scott Brenton's favourite pastime had been what he termed "playing Grandpa Wheeler." The game accomplished itself by means of a chair by way of pulpit, and a serried phalanx of other chairs by way of congregation, whom the young preacher harangued by the ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... many kinds of love. There is filial love, platonic love, the love leading to marriage, and the greatest love of all, mother love. Too many desecrate love by regarding it as a pastime, or selling all that passes for it, for ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley

... frolic and festivity begins in the fall, after the birds have left us and the holiday spirit of nature has commenced to subside. How absorbing the pastime of the sportsman who goes to the woods in the still October morning in quest of him! You step lightly across the threshold of the forest, and sit down upon the first log or rock to await the signals. It is so still that the ear suddenly seems ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... thee, it is the part of noble and generous spirits to pass by trifles. Where art thou lame? which of thy ribs is broken, or what part of thy skull is bruised, that thou canst never think on that jest without malice? for, after all, it was nothing but a jest, a harmless piece of pastime; had I looked upon it otherwise, I had returned to that place before this time, and had made more noble mischief in revenge of the abuse than ever the incensed Grecians did at Troy, for the detention of their Helen, that famed beauty of the ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... the "down stream" fisherman is equally assertive as to the value of his method. He feels the charm of gurgling waters around his limbs, a down current that aids rather than retards or fatigues him in each successive step of enjoyment in his pastime; as he casts his fifty or more feet of line adown the stream, he is assured that he is beyond the ken of the most keen-sighted and wary trout; that his artificial bugs, under the tension of the current seaming it from right to left, reaches every square ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... I have been the fool from the beginning. You shall not blame yourself, for I do not blame you. It has been a sweet comedy, a summer pastime. Forget what I may have said to you last night, forget what my eyes may have ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... of the Convent, when granted permission to go out into the city, was a favorite pastime, truly a labor of love, of the young gallants of that day,—an occupation, if very idle, at least very agreeable to those participating in these stolen promenades, and which have not, perhaps, been altogether discontinued in Quebec ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... suffered; and the amusements of the day were concerted. It was in consequence of this plan, that, after the comedy, they were entertained at the count's lodgings, where quadrille was proposed by the abbe, as the most innocent pastime, and the proposal was immediately embraced by all present, and by none with more alacrity than by our adventurer, who, without putting forth a moiety of his skill, went home with twenty louis clear gain. Though, far from believing himself greatly superior to the rest of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... with his brothers, he relates, that, in his youth, a comrade called one day to solicit their company upon some excursion. He was a young man of handsome address, intelligent, smart, and promising, though quite accustomed to enjoy much pastime. He was a fashionable young man for the times, wearing "dark brown hair, tied behind with blue ribbon; clear, mirthful eyes; boots which reached above his knees; a broad-skirted, scarlet coat, with gold lace on the cuffs, the collar, ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer

... close proximity over a rather dilapidated atlas. Their respective owners were apparently making a half-hearted endeavour to hunt out a list of towns upon the map of England, and were amusing themselves between whiles with the pleasant, though somewhat unprofitable pastime of grumbling. ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... has happened in this year!" said the Kammerjunker. "Come soon to me, and you shall see what I have had made for pastime—a bowling-green! Miss Sophie has ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... (after a pause in which they drink with each other and converse quietly across the tables). It seldom chances that so many brave men are seated together, as I see to-night in our hall. It were fitting, then, that we should essay the old pastime: Let each man name his chief exploit, that all may judge ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen

... greater part of his time went to the cultivation of his one hobby—the track and horses—for by reason of his financial standing, having large cotton and real-estate holdings in the State, he could afford to use business as a pastime. ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... there by the window, looking out with that well-bred interest in details of sport and pastime which was part of his creed. He braved it out even before the woman who had been a better friend to him than his dead wife. Not even to her would he confess that any event of existence could reach him through the impenetrable mask he wore before the world. Not even she must know that aught ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... Among the bystanders, too, there are some who might, probably with more reason, boast their proficiency in mysterious lore—fellows of smooth aspect and polite demeanour, whom at first you imagine to have become casual spectators from mere lack of better pastime, but whose furtive glances and vagrant attention betray the familiars of the police—that complex and mighty engine of modern structure, which, far more surely than the "ear of Dionysius," conveys to the tympanum of power each echoed sigh and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various

... quintessence of sin. If he had desired to defy all Divine law and outrage all human society, he felt that he could do it by shuffling them. And he was quite right. The two bad boys enjoyed in stealth their scandalous pastime, because they knew it was the most wicked thing they could do. If it had been as sinless as playing marbles, they would n't have cared for it. John sometimes drove past a brown, tumble-down farmhouse, whose shiftless ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... high as an incubator of malignant fevers and worse ailments, and to cap the climax the ice-machine was broken down. It always is, if the testimony of generations of castaways is to be given credence. Our only available pastime was to buy a soap-boxful of oysters, at the cost of a quarter, and sit in the narrow strip of shade before the "hotel" languidly opening them with the only available corkscrew, our weary gaze fixed on the blue arm of water framed ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... bloody bond, and saved, perhaps, some pretty Child, or an aged, helpless man or two— What's this in one annihilated city, Where thousand loves, and ties, and duties grew? Cockneys of London! Muscadins of Paris! Just ponder what a pious pastime War is.[iq] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... irrevocably lost. All this lore she had cherished by her school-children. Her boys were taught in addition any useful trade they liked—boot-making, crampon-making, horse-shoeing, wheel-making, or carpentry. This trade was made a pastime to each. The little maidens learned to sew, to cook, to spin, to card, to keep fowls and sheep and cattle in good health, and to know all poisonous plants ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... child about that rocky height, Led by her loving hand who gave him birth, Might wander in the clear unclouded light, And take his pastime in the beauteous earth; Smell the fair flowers in stony cradles swung, And see God's happy creatures ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... the tropics, we saw various kinds of fish, in greater abundance than elsewhere. As the whale, or mighty Leviathan, whom God hath created to take his pastime in the seas; Dolphins also, and Albicores, with Bonitoes, flying-fishes, and many others. Some whales were of an exceeding greatness, which, in calm weather, would often rise and shew themselves above the water, appearing like vast rocks; and, while rising, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... usually found in Party ranks seldom were of the type that inspired you to romance but he wondered now, looking at this new assistant of his, if he hadn't let too much of his youth go by without more investigation into the usually favorite pastime of youth. ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... in civil cases, all men, theoretically, had an equal chance in courts of equity, litigation was made so expensive, whether purposely or not, that justice was really a one-sided pastime, in which the rich man could easily wear out the poor contestant. This, however, is not the place for a dissertation on that most remarkable of noteworthy sorcerer's arts, the making of justice an expensive ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... destroying a sin. My hoe becomes an instrument of retributive justice. I am an apostle of nature. This view of the matter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else does, and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoeing becomes, not a pastime, but a duty. And you get to regard it so, as the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... uninteresting. Ten years on the road had taught Emma McChesney to extract a maximum of enjoyment out of a minimum of material. Emma McChesney's favorite occupation was selling T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats, and her favorite pastime was studying men and women. The two things ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... us at dinner. The boss greeted Nimrod with the assurance that I was 'all right' and could apply any time for a job. I may as well say that Nimrod had allowed me to go without him in the morning, because the cattle business was no novelty to him; because daybreak rising did not appeal to him as a pastime; and because, at the time I broached the subject, being engaged in writing a story, he had removed but one-eighth of his mind for the consideration of mundane affairs, and that, as any one knows, is insufficient to judge fairly whether the winged thing I ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson

... of shuttered villas, for through the winter each village in the neighbourhood of Paris hibernates, those whom the peasants style les bourgeois still regarding country life as essentially a summer pastime. ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... In the first place the young woman had committed suicide, which of itself was a crime and disentitled you to Christian burial; in the second she had died in a way greatly to inconvenience persons in the highest society; in the third she had always understood that racing was a perfectly proper pastime for gentlemen; and in the fourth this incident, touching Michael through his relationship with the deceased, would bring him again in contact with that Vivie Warren—there she was and there was he, in close converse—and ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... bright, and silvery-gray lump which very much resembled silver-ore. I looked at the mass thoughtfully for some time: an idea germinated, and there and then I planned a new amusement which became our most delightful pastime during ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... in a practical age. All round us we see foreign competition making itself unpleasant. And we spend our time playing golf! What do we get out of it? Is golf any use? That's what I'm asking you. Can you name me a single case where devotion to this pestilential pastime has done a man any ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... after that in which young Jobson and his friend had tumbled into the Colven, a large party of us were down at the bathing- place, indulging in what had now become a favourite summer pastime. It so happened that our party was made up entirely of boys in the two senior classes of the school—the fifth and the sixth. Most of us were landed and dressing, and while so occupied had leisure to watch the performances ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... other through the water, and flap their wings and dive about, in evident enjoyment of their pastime, it is a sign that ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... scruples of his reason, the noble prejudices of his faith, in presence of the necessity of granting that bread of falsehood which poor humanity requires in order to be happy? Doubtless, he begged the pardon of Heaven for allowing it to be mixed up in what he regarded as childish pastime, for exposing it to ridicule in connection with an affair in which there was only sickliness and dementia. But his flock suffered so much, hungered so ravenously for the marvellous, for fairy stories with which to lull the pains of life. And thus, in tears, the Bishop at last sacrificed his respect ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... one of those young men who find pastime in flirtations with nursery maids or kitchen girls. The very thought of it offended his good taste. Once, in listening to the boastful tales of a modern Don Juan, who was relating his gallant adventures with a handsome waiter ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... here but as elsewhere! 'Tis gambling and feasting, duelling and dancing; And love-making always, wherever he goes. To-day he's for pastime, besieging the countess, While we watch the husband and laugh ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... gentler sex we regard as the strongest indication of an awakening national taste for exercise. But there is need of caution. Most persons skate with too heavy clothes. The quick movements of the limbs in the changing evolutions of this pastime—though the practised skater is unconscious of much muscular effort—quicken the circulation enough to increase palpably the animal heat and produce a very sensible perspiration. In this exposed condition, the quiet walk home is taken without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various



Words linked to "Pastime" :   avocation, pursuit, by-line, spare-time activity, diversion, hobby, recreation, sideline



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