"Dabble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... service. To this it may be replied that the buyers and sellers of stocks are indirectly performing the function of adjusting demand and supply, and so regulating industry. So far as they are expert business men trained in the knowledge of a particular market this may be so. So far as they dabble in the market in the hope of profiting from a favourable turn, they appear rather as gamblers. I will not pretend to determine which of the two is the larger class. I would point out only that, on the face of the facts, the profits derived from this particular source ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... dabble in politics. And my views of political subjects were as much out of the ordinary way as my views on matters pertaining to religion. I was a republican. I would have no King, no Queen, no House of Lords, and no State Church. I would ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... an embrace of comfortable arms and bosom. Her unwieldy figure reminded Laura of a broad, low wall that has been freshly papered in a large flowered pattern. On her hands and bosom a number of fine emeralds flashed, for events had shown in the end that the impecunious young lover was not fated to dabble in stocks in vain. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... secured a fair return from an investment in oil, and came out about even on the race-track. Up to this time, however, he had never indulged in the luxury of a theatrical venture, notwithstanding the hankering he had at times to dabble in that direction. As soon as he saw Handy he called him aside and began a little preliminary skirmishing, and in a roundabout way started in to lay bare the strenuous thoughts that were agitating his mind. He opened up the subject by inquiring ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... Dabble your hands, and steep them well Until those nails are pearly white Now rosier than a laurel bell; Then ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... you see; but not for this must you accuse us of the levity of culture. We might patronize; we did not dabble.—One seems to hear from those early ages, echoes of tones familiar now. Ours is the good old roast beef and common sense of—I mean, the grand old gravitas of Rome. What! you must have a Jupiter to worship, mustn't you? No sound as by Parliament-Established-Religion of Numa Pompilius, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... "I dabble very little in merchandise," returned the brigadier; "but, as a general principle, I should say that no article of Leaphigh manufacture would command so certain a market in Leaplow ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... for the coots and water-hens, which love to dabble amongst the weeds of these pools, and to hide amongst the hedges and bulrushes that so thickly skirt them. See how rapidly the swifts or "Jack-squealers," as the country folks call them, are gliding by; you remember when we were noticing the swallows and martins that we thought of the swifts. ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... times a day, To bustle to the town with speed, To dabble in what dirt he may,— Le Frere Lubin's the man you need! But any sober life to lead Upon an exemplary plan, Requires a Christian indeed,— Le Frere ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... herself exclusively to the society of her friends and to literature."—"Ah, there it is! . . . Literature! Do you think I am to be imposed upon by that word? While discoursing on literature, morals, the fine arts, and such matters, it is easy to dabble in politics. Let women mind their knitting. If your mother were in Paris I should hear all sorts of reports about her. Things might, indeed, be falsely attributed to her; but, be that as it may, I will have nothing of the kind going on in the capital in which I reside. All things ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... ma'am,' said the doctor, after another pause, 'that to dabble in smuggling is to court many awkward situations. You need not remind me of that, who am fresh from misleading that young man. It was—if you will pardon my saying so—by reason of his trust in my good faith that you ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... come of it," said Grey. "India has spoiled you. Men who dabble too much in that sort of thing go mad. The brain is a delicate instrument. ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... gave it to my old nurse, she, honest woman, was so just to me as to lay it all out again for me, and gave me head-dresses, and linen, and gloves, and ribbons, and I went very neat, and always clean; for that I would do, and if I had rags on, I would always be clean, or else I would dabble them in water myself; but, I say, my good nurse, when I had money given me, very honestly laid it out for me, and would always tell the ladies this or that was bought with their money; and this made them oftentimes give me more, till at last I was indeed ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... drift along past the bright, flat water-lily leaves over the greenish depths, to listen to the pigeons, watch the dragon-flies flitting past, and the fish leaping lazily, not even steering, letting her hand dabble in the water, then cooling her sun-warmed cheek with it, and all the time gazing at Summerhay, who, dipping his sculls gently, gazed at her—all this was like a voyage down some river of dreams, the very fulfilment of felicity. There is a degree of happiness ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of every writer of eminence, as well as every pretender to letters, among the Romans to dabble with the drama, there were a multitude of tragic poets whose names were soon forgotten, and many whose names alone are incidentally mentioned while their works shared the fate of their bodies, and were buried in ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... "The ancient teachers of this science," said he, "promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... look here, Kettle. This mystery game has gone on long enough, and you've got to be put on the ground floor, like the rest of us. Did you ever dabble ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... I'm not up to that kind of thing," Geof answered; "you know I don't pretend to paint. My business is with bricks and mortar. It's only when I'm loafing that I dabble in colours." ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... his shoes, removed his socks, and thrust both feet over the side to dabble them in the saline ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... put down by Act of Parliament, and all who dabble in it placed with him who can cite Scripture for his purposes,' ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... had finished her work long before, but she continued to dabble in the water merely as an excuse to hear this story, which for two weeks had excited her curiosity. Her mouth was open, and her eyes were shining with satisfaction at ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... bright sky cleave To the very feet of God, and send her hosts Of injured Saints to scatter sparks of plague Thro' all your cities, blast your infants, dash The torch of war among your standing corn, Dabble your hearths with your own blood.—Enough! Thou wilt not break it! I, the Count—the King— Thy friend—am grateful for thine honest oath, Not coming fiercely like a conqueror, now, But softly as a bridegroom to his own. For I shall ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... nobleman was known to dabble in magic, and there were one or two dark passages in his past life of which more than a whisper had gone abroad. Of being a student of alchemy, a "philosopher"—that is to say, a seeker after the philosopher's stone, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... cheat God, and who do to some extent cheat themselves, by professing ignorance of the way which would lead them to His heart. Some of us have learned only too well to raise questions about the method of salvation instead of accepting it, and to dabble in theology instead of making sure work of return. Some of us would fain substitute a host of isolated actions, or apparent moral or religious observance, for the return of will and heart to God; and all who in their consciences answer God's call by saying, 'Wherein shall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... only trials in this Jigoku yashiki (Hell mansion). There was her ladyship to take into account. Says the proverb of the Nipponese—"dabble in vermilion, and one is stained red." Contact with Shu[u]zen had developed all the harsher traits in this stern samurai dame. She despised the former character of her husband, and now was mad with jealousy at his unrestrained lechery. However there was some consolation in this new pursuit. Promiscuous ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... round again. Now I am uncommonly fond of ducks, both roasted and roasting and roystering; and it is a fine sight to behold them walk, poddling one after other, with their toes out, like soldiers drilling, and their little eyes cocked all ways at once, and the way that they dib with their bills, and dabble, and throw up their heads and enjoy something, and then tell the others about it. Therefore I knew at once, by the way they were carrying on, that there must be something or other gone wholly amiss in the duck-world. Sister Annie perceived it too, but with a greater quickness; for she counted them ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... been written by Mr. Price, but it might have been written by a dozen other young men—granting intelligence, youth, leisure, a university education, and three or four years of London life—any one of a dozen clever young men who frequent West End drawing-rooms and dabble in literature might have written it. All that could be said was that the play was, or rather had been, dans le mouvement; and original work never is dans le mouvement. Divorce was nothing more than the product of certain ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... spirit. On the other hand, a man-god of the magical sort is nothing but a man who possesses in an unusually high degree powers which most of his fellows arrogate to themselves on a smaller scale; for in rude society there is hardly a person who does not dabble in magic. Thus, whereas a man-god of the former or inspired type derives his divinity from a deity who has stooped to hide his heavenly radiance behind a dull mask of earthly mould, a man-god of the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... his success-power. The mere fact of his failure has interest; but how did he take his defeat? What did he do next? Was he discouraged? Did he slink out of sight? Did he conclude that he had made a mistake in his calling, and dabble in something else? Or was he up and at it again with a determination ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... left, satisfied, a little group of thumbling hornpouts come and grub and dabble in the muddy hole whence the unio came, feeding upon I know not what; probably tiny infusoriae of the fresh water. These little black cats are the busiest folk of the brook at this time of the year, and just whence they come or whither they go I cannot ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... and it carries a house below it instead of a car—a veritable house, with two storeys, and doors and windows. The freedom of its motion sailing away reminds me that the Rob Roy ought to be moving too,—that she was not built to dabble about on rivers, but to charge the crested wave; and, indeed, there was always a sensation of being pent up when she was merely floating near the inland cornfields, and so far from the salt green sea; and this, too, even though pleasant parties of ladies were ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... of such a thing!" cried the widow. "Donkeys dance on ropes, school-boys dabble in doctor's business! Show me the thing at once! We want no ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... darkness, dost thou hope to stay Time's dread advance till thou hast had thy day? Dost think the Strangler will release his hold Because, forsooth, some fibs remain untold? No, no—beneath thy multiplying load Of years thou canst not tarry on the road To dabble in the blood thy leaden feet Have pressed from bosoms that have ceased to beat Of reputations margining thy way, Nor wander from the path new truth to slay. Tell to thyself whatever lies thou wilt, Catch as thou canst at pennies got by guilt— Straight down to death this blessed year thou'lt ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... the mouths of stone men To spread at ease under the sky In granite-lipped basins, Where iris dabble their feet And rustle to a passing wind, The water fills the garden with its rushing, In the midst of the ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... what move to make an' when to make it. If Molly is one thing she is game. We've got a good deal out of the mine an' it's all come so far from the sale of gold to the mint, I take it. We don't dabble in stocks. We're ahead. If the mine's gone bu'st she's done ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... let my feet dabble in the water, Dinny," said Dick, wickedly. "The crocodiles snap at hands or feet ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... said, and sat down on the floor. "I went tired this morning, since I came in here and started talking to you—as tired as if I had been pouring my life-blood here on these planks for you to dabble your ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... brethren at every street-corner!" continued she. "Well; I didn't mean to dabble in witchcraft to-day, further than the lighting of my pipe; but a witch I am, and a witch I'm likely to be, and there's no use trying to shirk it. I'll make a man of my scarecrow, were it ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... have, it don't trouble me much!" she answered. "Why don't you dabble your feet; 'tis ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... of a stupid curiosity to know what the flower is made of. Is its colour any prettier, or its scent any sweeter, when you DO know? But there! the poor souls must get through the time, you see—they must get through the time. You dabbled in nasty mud, and made pies, when you were a child; and you dabble in nasty science, and dissect spiders, and spoil flowers, when you grow up. In the one case and in the other, the secret of it is, that you have got nothing to think of in your poor empty head, and nothing to do with your poor idle hands. And so it ends in your spoiling canvas with paints, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... the plainest of plain prose, I am not a theorist on these subjects, nor do I dabble in small fruits as a rich and fanciful amateur, to whom it is a matter of indifference whether his strawberries cost five cents or a dollar a quart. As a farmer, milk must be less expensive than champagne. I could not afford a fruit farm at all if it did not more than pay ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... true: I wrecked my father's bank with my loans To dabble in wheat; but this was true— I was buying wheat for him as well, Who couldn't margin the deal in his name Because of his church relationship. And while George Reece was serving his term I chased the will-o-the-wisp ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... a cautious man, has publicly admitted hypnotic suggestion. He thinks extraordinary curative effects, so far as the consciousness of pain goes, are to be derived from hypnotism, which is Mesmerism with a new Greek name. But he always exhorts laics not to dabble in it, and medical men to keep their hypnotic lore to themselves. This is charming after the way in which the profession of which Charcot is really a bright light treated Mesmerism. Mesmer was an empiric. But he ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... to continue so to the end of the chapter—i.e., our interminable rhymes; til, tired of exchanging our bad prose for worse poetry, (and having the fear of his maledictions before our eyes,) we throw it aside in a pet. Then comes a change over our spirit; and we dabble in paint-pots, and flourish a palette, and are great on canvass, and in chalks, and there is a mingled perfume of oil and turpentine in our studio (whilome study) that is to us highly refreshing, and good against ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... gracefully to the simple ration, and cease to dabble with frying-pans. Cooks to their aprons, and soldiers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... my father, laughing and frowning at the same time; "what will you be at twenty, if you dabble in metaphysics before you are ten? Come, I must set you to study Euclid; that will sober your wild head a little." I took the book with great glee, delighted to have a new field of inquiry, but soon threw it aside. Mathematics and I could never agree. Speculative ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... of romance from Catherine's imaginative mind, but the dark suspicions she harbours about General Tilney are not altogether inexplicable. He is so much less natural and so much more stagey than the other characters that he might reasonably be expected to dabble in the sinister. This time Catherine is misled by memories of the Sicilian Romance into weaving a mystery around the fate of Mrs. Tilney, whom she pictures receiving from the hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food. She watches in vain for "glimmering lights," ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Mr. Collins's explanation? "Perhaps the simplest solution of the problem is to accept the hypothesis that in early life he was in an attorney's office (!), that he there contracted a love for the law which never left him, that as a young man in London he continued to study or dabble in it for his amusement, to stroll in leisure hours into the Courts, and to frequent the society of lawyers. On no other supposition is it possible to explain the attraction which the law evidently had for him, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... up a basset table. That, if anything could, must proclaim her a woman of fashion—a woman, indeed, who had a fancy to be a trifle daring. There's no doubt that Alison about this time and afterwards did want to dabble in danger. She was not her father's daughter for nothing. She encouraged high play. For herself, she enjoyed the excitement of it, having no need to care if she lost. She wanted to have about her people who ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... the key, A sullen nobleness to you disclosed E'en then with shame: and by no other guessed. This you well know: betray not that at least; For even the lightest woman here is scared, And dreads to dabble deeper in the soul. We have ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... the class which we were desirous of forming. The offer was eagerly seized upon, and so it came to pass that she had been installed as teacher and director of the mysteries in which we were about to dabble. ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... up to the Governor, composed apparently by the hapless wizard himself, who seemed to be no mean penman, and signed by a dozen or more of the coloured inhabitants: setting forth how he was known by all to be far too virtuous a personage to dabble in that unlawful practice of Obeah, of which both he and his friends testified the deepest abhorrence. But there was the bottle, safe under lock and key; and as for the testimonial, those who read it said that it was not worth the paper it was written on. Most probably every one of these poor ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... 5th only yesterday, while I had letters of the 8th from London. Doth the post dabble into our letters? Whatever agreement you make with Murray, if satisfactory to you, must be so to me. There need be no scruple, because, though I used sometimes to buffoon to myself, loving a quibble as well as the barbarian himself ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... at the second ballots does not strike me as an ideal institution. It generally goes, in Germany, under the name of Kuh-Handel (cow-bargain). It often brings out the worst symptoms of intrigue and political immorality.... Those who dabble in the Kuh-Handel either lead their own contingent as allies into an enemy's camp from spite against another adversary, or they induce their own men to desist from voting at all at a second ballot, so as to give a chance to another candidate, whom they really detest with all their ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... was invaluable to him, and cheap, neither of which qualifications you possess. There is another matter against you—in fact, several other matters. You dabble in theatricals." ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... legend of Napoleonic glory, the sentimental Bonapartism that he owed to the epic narratives of his grandfather, was now complete. He had ceased to be a believer in Republicanism, pure and simple, considering the remedy not drastic enough; he had begun to dabble in the theories of the extremists, he was a believer in the necessity of the Terror as the only means of ridding them of the traitors and imbeciles who were about to slay the country. And so it was that he was heart and ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... his nimble-wimble, was like the unicorn, not altogether in length indeed, but in virtue and propriety; for as the unicorn purified pools and fountains from filth and venom, so that other animals came and drank securely there afterwards, in the like manner others might water their nags, and dabble after him without fear of shankers, carnosities, gonorrhoeas, buboes, crinkams, and such other plagues caught by those who venture to quench their amorous thirst in a common puddle; for with his nervous horn he removed all the infection that might be lurking in some blind ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... th' intrigues, and trust Of feeble, speculative lust: Procurer to th' extravagancy, And crazy ribaldry of fancy, 360 By those the Devil had forsook, As things below him to provoke. But b'ing a virtuoso, able To smatter, quack, and cant, and dabble, He held his talent most adroit 365 For any mystical exploit; As others of his tribe had done, And rais'd their prices three to one: For one predicting pimp has th' odds Of chauldrons of plain downright bawds. 370 But as an elf (the Devil's ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... despair, cried out in a voice that was like to break my heart, though I could not make out one word of his paraphernally. It minded me, by all the world, of a wheen cats fuffing and fighting through ither, and whiles something that sounded like "Sugar, sugar, measure the cord," and "dabble dabble." It was worse than the most outrageous Gaelic ever spoken in the height of passion by a ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... "I am free to confess that I have no personal desire to dabble in philanthropy, or conduct schools of any kind; my hands are full ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... got into magnificent company, and modern taste finds that he deserved it; and certainly, me judice, nothing can be more purely artistic than a fine Scarabaeus, and the fascination that comes over whoever has ventured to dabble in that kind of wares is as dangerous as the chances of play. Be content with a single one! If you once get into comparison, you have abandoned yourself to the witchery of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... to the tower, We rifled the kist, and the cattle we maimed; Our dirks stabbed at guess through the leaves o' the bower, And crimes we committed that needna be named: Moonlight or dawning grey, Lammas or Lady-day, Donald maun dabble his plaid in the gore; He maun hough and maun harry, or should he miscarry, The Hielan's, the Hielan's ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Caesar set the fashion, and in Rome it would have been conspicuous not to dabble ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... them; women, too, seem disposed to prove that they have something else to attend to, besides setting off and conserving their beauty. We have with us a youth sent for sale to Tripoli by the Bashaw of Fezzan, who it seems must dabble in slave-dealing, notwithstanding his imprecations against the merchants of Ghadames for the same crime. He is from Mandara, and was kidnapped by the Tibboos. This is the captain of all the sham-fighters, and the leader and prompter of all other sports on the way. There is always ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... frankness, and with that queer morality of the Camp which, if it swallows a camel now and again, never strains at a gnat, how healthy and wholesome, and even pure, are your romances! You never gloat over sin, nor dabble with an ugly curiosity in the corruptions of sense. The passions in your tales are honourable and brave, the motives are clearly human. Honour, Love, Friendship make the threefold cord, the clue your knights and dames follow through how delightful a labyrinth of adventures! Your greatest books, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... or less interest in matters pertaining to surgery, at least as far as it is desirable that a boy should dabble in such things. He had borrowed many books from Dr. Temple, and on two occasions had set a broken arm in a fashion that won him words ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Chevalier so great a loser as to cause his bankruptcy. Whether such is the real cause or not, it is difficult to ascertain what could induce the Chevalier to descend from his dealings with the head to dabble with lower commodities. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... I'm an old fool, and for making you as bad. Poetry's not your business, you understand: I'm giving ye no encouragement to dabble with the fine arts. Science is the ladder for a working-man to climb to fame. In addition to which, the poet Keats, though he certainly speaks the very language of Nature, was a bit of a heathen, I'm afraid, and the fascination ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of our English Newman Street apostles, and of M. de la M—, the mad priest, and his congregation of mad converts, should be a warning to such of us as are inclined to dabble in religious speculations; for, in them, as in all others, our flighty brains soon lose themselves, and we find our reason speedily lying prostrated at the mercy of our passions; and I think that Madame Sand's novel of Spiridion may do ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dead tone: "Money is required for establishments. I have a Reversion coming some day; I don't dabble in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Buttercup was more than usually exasperating, Mrs. Baxter said to the Prophet, who was bracing himself to keep from being pulled into a wayside brook where Buttercup loved to dabble, "Elisha, do you know anything about the ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Burly men, who certainly cannot ride a race, but who have horse in every feature, puff cigars and chat in jerky monosyllables that to an outsider are perfectly incomprehensible. But the glib way in which heavy sums of money are spoken of conveys the impression that they dabble ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... old gentleman, "why do you people dabble in matters you don't understand? Come here, Tweddle, and let me show you. Can't you see what a miserable sham the thing is—a cheap, tawdry imitation of the splendid classic type? Why, by merely exhibiting such a thing, you're vitiating ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... where now and then the tenderest little breeze would creep over my skin, until the sun baking me more than was pleasant, I would rouse myself with an effort, and running down to the fringe of rushes that bordered the full-brimmed river, plunge again headlong into the quiet brown water, and dabble and swim till I was once more weary! For innocent animal delight, I know of nothing to match those days—so warm, yet so pure-aired—so clean, so glad. I often think how God must love his little children to have invented for them such delights! ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... and when his aspirations began to settle round Miss Austin, he tasted, perhaps for the only time in his life, the pangs of diffidence. There was indeed opening before him a wide door of hope. He had changed into the service of Messrs. Liddell & Gordon; these gentlemen had begun to dabble in the new field of marine telegraphy; and Fleeming was already face to face with his life's work. That impotent sense of his own value, as of a ship aground, which makes one of the agonies of youth, began to fall from him. New problems which ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... smiled. "If I take it," she said, "I shall do harm instead of good—I shall be accused of interfering. Give it to one of the servants. Not yet! When Mrs. Gallilee is angry, she doesn't get over it so soon as you seem to think. Leave her to dabble in science first," said the governess in tones of immeasurable contempt. "When she has half stifled herself with some filthy smell, or dissected some wretched insect or flower, she may be ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... and of her happiness in her labours was her thoroughness. It was a family joke that in the garden she was never satisfied to dabble in her flower-beds like other people, but would always clear out what she called "the Irish corners," and attack bits of waste or neglected ground from which everybody else shrank. And amongst our neighbours ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... entomologist, who can only invent new ways of hatching out wire-worms! Yet all may really depend on the first chance direction which led one brother as a boy to buy a butterfly net, and sent the other into the school laboratory to dabble with an electric wheel ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... not, which merely proves you are not a 'fly-cop,' only a measly busy-body sticking your nose into some one else's business. Well, we know how to take care of your kind, and this is likely to prove the last case you'll dabble in ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... play for money ruins whist: and seldom can his Club Persuade him to put counters (coins for Zulus!) on the rub; He has been known for lozenges to dabble with piquet; He wasn't Chief Attorney then, nor ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... counter-facts, but dare not state them, he is at once met with a praejudicium. The mere fact of his having ascertained the truth is imputed as a blame to him, in a sort of prudish cant. 'What a very improper person he must be to like to dabble in such improper books that they must not even be quoted.' If in self-defence he desperately gives his facts, he only increases the feeling against him, whilst the reactionists, hiding their blushing faces, find in their modesty an excuse for avoiding the truth; if, on the other hand, he ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... it for an ambassador to dabble in treasonable intrigue, especially when old, and when the weather is wet. Let us suppose that Goring and the Earl met. Goring's business was to ask if the Earl 'has leave to disclose the secret that was not in his power to do, last time you saw him. ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... man who more than any other is responsible for the industrial regeneration of this continent started in life as a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railway. Thomas Alva Edison was then about fifteen years of age. He had already begun to dabble in chemistry, and had fitted up a small itinerant laboratory. One day, as he was performing some occult experiment, the train rounded a curve, and the bottle of sulphuric acid broke. There followed a series of unearthly odors and unnatural complications. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... worse," says our implacable critic; "when women were content with looking pretty before marriage, and with good housekeeping after, they were uninteresting certainly, but they were respectable. Now they dabble in all things; are weakly aesthetic, weakly scientific, weakly controversial, and wholly prosy, and contemptible." Dabbling is pitiful, certainly, and weakness has few allies, but let us do justice even to the weak dabblers. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Jew remained unmoved. He continued to dabble his finger-tips in the water as one who meditates. Presently he dried them on either sleeve so that ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... "Your legs will dry better if they are just wet, instead of being wet and muddy, Sue. Dabble 'em in the brook." ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope
... his prejudices and inhibitions began to melt away; the display of feelings and sensibilities could not be wicked or even undesirable if it prepared the way for the gospel by softening the heart. He began to dabble in emotion himself, and that was a dangerous matter, for he knew nothing whatever about it save that, if he felt strongly, he could arouse strong feeling in others. Day by day he unwittingly became less sure of the moral ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... myself. I began to see more clearly that it doesn't do for a man of scruples to dabble in politics. I had a great regard for poor Johnny, and I felt no confidence in the colonel treating him with any consideration. In fact, I would not have insured Johnny's life for the next week at any conceivable premium. Again I thought it unlikely ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... my depth, at any rate," quoth he. "I am but ill read in ancient controversies, though I know you dabble ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... issue, the most prominent one of the war, according to Smooth's opinion, was in regard to who should be the greatest toad in the European puddle? Your European puddle is no ordinary affair; kings and emperors only dabble in it at the expense of their people. I viewed with some interest this European cesspool. In the centre there was seated on a pole, with his arms folded, and having an air of assumed independence, a corpulent old gentleman, whose face fused broad and red, like a full moon in harvest-time. ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... these people, so to speak, a right to meddle and dabble in her heart? Was she to be wept over by Sister Angela—to confess her sins to Father Bowles—still worse, to Father Leadham? As she asked herself the question, she shrank in sudden passion from the whole ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to dabble in: it is so vast, so fragmentary, so embarrassed by dogmatic hypotheses and assertions, and deterring complications, that one must give oneself wholly to it for any chance of getting to its foundations. But I feel on perfectly ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... heard nuthing 'bout votin' till freedom. I don't think I ever voted till I come to Mississippi. I votes Republican. That's the party of my color and I stick to them long as they do right. I don't dabble in white folk's buzness an' that white folks votin' is their buzness. If I vote I go do it and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... of course, every tree and hole and stream and almost every stone and bird's nest about your own home in the country; you will never get to know any other place so well again in your life, for when one is grown up one can't climb trees and dabble in streams and build huts and root about in the earth. Jesus was just a natural boy; He grew to know all the byways between the little gardens, all the trees which bore figs or pomegranates or olives or ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... drinking, used to get constantly drunk, and rolled from public-house to public-house, and bar to bar, and as the worst glass of vitrol still cost a penny, he became reduced to undertaking the part which you have seen, to dabble in the water, to blacken himself, and to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Newmarket spring meeting. He told me that he made some L700 a year by the turf. "I've a cousin, you see, who is a great sporting man, and thus I'm 'in with a stable,' and get put up to tips," he said. "But for this the turf would be a very poor thing to dabble in." And this led to a talk about officers' lives and their money-affairs. "Oh," he said, "you've no notion of the number who go to utter grief. Why now, I'll tell you what happened to me last season in London. I was asked to go down and dine with some fellows at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... warm trees The golden builders toil and sing; While swallows dip along the leas, And dabble in the ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... And to dabble my hands in their muck, to settle down and live my life according to their bourgeois standards, to have grossness of soft flesh replace able sinews, to submerge mentality in favor of a specious craftiness of mind which passes in the "city" for brains—well, I'm on the road. And, ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was arranged between the painter and my brother that they should depart the next day but one; they then began to talk of art. "I'll stick to the heroic," said the painter; "I now and then dabble in the comic, but what I do gives me no pleasure, the comic is so low; there is nothing like the heroic. I am engaged here on a heroic picture," said he, pointing to the canvas; "the subject is 'Pharaoh dismissing Moses from Egypt,' after the last plague—the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... a hole above for peeping. Let them, when they once get in, Sell the nation for a pin; While they sit a-picking straws, Let them rave of making laws; While they never hold their tongue, Let them dabble in their dung: Let them form a grand committee, How to plague and starve the city; Let them stare, and storm, and frown, When they see a clergy gown; Let them, ere they crack a louse, Call for th'orders of the house; Let them, with their ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... am the most miserable of men, a 'mute inglorious Milton' is nothing to me. Nature has created me a lover of the picturesque. In heart and soul I am an artist, I dabble in colours, I dream of lights and shades and glorious effects; but the power of working out my ideas is denied me. If I try to paint a tree my friends gibe at me. I am a poor literary hack; but I give you my word, my dear old ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... substitute, or perhaps cannot substitute other occupations for the work to which they have been accustomed, change in a singular manner; some die outright; others take to fishing, the vacancy of that amusement resembling that of their late employment under government; others, who are smarter men, dabble in stocks, lose their savings, and are thankful to obtain a place in some enterprise that is likely to succeed, after a first disaster and liquidation, in the hands of an abler management. The late clerk then rubs his hands, now empty, and says to himself, "I always ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Swinburne often meant very little, and in his heart of hearts Ferguson thought Languor was, on the whole, more melodious than Dolores. But that was, of course, purely a matter of opinion. At any rate, it was a fine composition; and a poet must not dabble in the common intrigues ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... beautiful creature. But the boy-seal swam lustily away as his grandmother had told him to do, and the men continued to pursue him. Whenever he rose to the surface to breathe, he took care to come up behind the kayaks, where he would splash and dabble in order to lure them on. As soon as he had attracted their attention and they had turned to pursue him, he would dive and come up farther out in the sea. The men were so interested in catching him that they did not observe how they were being led far out into the ocean and ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... have no desire to alleviate your confessed boredom. Your persistence would be praiseworthy if well directed. Waters wear away stone, the wind crumbles the marble, but a woman is not moved till she wishes to be. I never thought that I should dabble in an intrigue of this sort, and I am surprised at the amusement it affords me. I really owe you some gratitude. The few I have met who know you tell me that you ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... such rush as men might make up a tumbling waterway with slipping pebbles beneath the feet and forced themselves one by one between the heaped stone piles and fairly in front of the barrier there was a discharge of arrows and more than one man, impaled by a stone-headed shaft, fell, to dabble feebly in the water, and did not rise again. But there came a time in the fight when the bow must ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Marie Exili, had died in her bed, warning her daughter not to dabble in the forbidden arts which she had taught her, but to cling to her husband and live an honest life as the only means of dying a more hopeful death ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... green leaves sported with the breeze. But not one of these leafy damsels had seen Proserpina. Then, going a little farther, Ceres would, perhaps, come to a fountain, gushing out of a pebbly hollow in the earth, and would dabble with her hand in the water. Behold, up through its sandy and pebbly bed, along with the fountain's gush, a young woman with dripping hair would arise, and stand gazing at Mother Ceres, half out ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... appease The nagging of her long disease, Comes day by day to dabble in This foamy sea ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... sporty not to give him a start, Uncle Zack," came still another voice, this time from the shrubbery where Brent, returning from a dabble at his work, had halted in the ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris |
