"Dabble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Sir Thomas Overbury. If he had been murdered by poison, there could be no doubt that Weston was one of the perpetrators. He had been brought up as an apothecary; and it was said that he was selected on account of his being thus enabled to dabble in poisons. The charge against him is very indistinct. He was charged that he, 'in the Tower of London, in the parish of Allhallows Barking, did obtain and get into his hand certain poison of green and yellow colour, called rosalgar—knowing the same to be deadly poison—and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... taken sick, hurries for the mother and the physician. He tells just enough of the story to convict himself, but suppresses everything which may convict her. How know I that this resistance in the carriage was more than a sham? How know I that he did not attend her in the house? That they did not dabble together on their way through the dark piazza—along the stairs?—Nay, what proof is there that he did not find his way, with polluting purpose, into the very chamber?—that chamber, from which, not three weeks after, she bade him fly to ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... agreed Bunny. "Your legs will dry better if they are just wet, instead of being wet and muddy, Sue. Dabble 'em ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope
... first place, he wishes to dispose of certain individuals who call themselves men of wit and fashion—about town—who he is told have abused his book "vaustly"—their own word. These people paint their cheeks, wear white kid gloves, and dabble in literature, or what they conceive to be literature. For abuse from such people, the writer was prepared. Does any one imagine that the writer was not well aware, before he published his book, that, whenever he gave it to the world, he should be attacked by every literary ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... from the conflict. They did not care to risk a rebuff: they knew Christophe, they knew his efficiency, and they knew also that he was not long-suffering. Certain of them had discreetly expressed their regret that so gifted a composer should dabble in a profession not his own. Whatever might be their opinion (when they had one), and however hurt they might be by Christophe, they respected in him their own privilege of being able to criticise everything without being criticised themselves. But when they ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... of volumes the latest information relative to all the new sciences. Books were too expensive for the common person, but not so for the bourgeoisie, nor for numerous nobles. Indeed, it became quite the fashion in society to be a "savant," a scientist, a philosopher, to dabble in chemistry, perhaps even to have a little laboratory or a telescope, and to dazzle ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... 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 ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... Philip's grandfather up and died, after quarreling for years and years with the whole family, and left Philip all his money! I think Philip's quarrel with his father pleased him. But the very queerest part is that Philip actually likes to work and dabble in foreign politics and he flatly refused to give up his job! Isn't it romantic? Philip was always keen for adventure. Dick says you never could put your finger on a spot on the map and say comfortably, 'Philip Poynter's here!' ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... your clients slip into your hand, my dear young lady," he advised, "and don't dabble in what you don't understand. The Stock Exchange is a den of thieves, and Maurice here and I are two ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not preside when I was lucklessly ushered into this dancing gilt bubble that we call the world, were all good gifts denied me? The fairies ordained that I should paint, should soar like Apelles, Angelo, and Da Vinci into the empyrean of pure classic art, but no sooner did I dabble in pigment, and plume my slender artistic pin-feathers, than the granite hands of Palma pride seized the ambitious ephemeron, cut off the sprouting wings, and bade me paint only my lips and cheeks, if dabble in paint I must. I am ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... list," he said. "Let us have no students of occult; no men who dabble in laboratory spiritualism; just nice, live, healthy people who never heard of such things—if possible. You can ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... 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
... the Assyrian useless 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 solid ground in Medo- Persian or Scythian. Difficulties ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... those children down there!' said the queen, sobbing and pointing to them. 'Did you ever see anybody so happy? Why can't I have mud to dabble in too, and why can't I take off my shoes and stockings, and amuse myself like the children do, instead of being so dull ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... certain of her receipts, to instruct 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
... not know. How does it happen that a man with such responsibilities can take time to dabble ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... 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. Do ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... 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 quiet of ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... to dabble her feet in the creek presented itself to her. Always she had liked to play in the water. What a delight now to take off her shoes and stockings and wade out into the shallows near the bank! She had worn low shoes that afternoon, and ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... gracefully to the simple ration, and cease to dabble with frying-pans. Cooks to their aprons, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... of you know something of the habits of the tame or domestic duck. But perhaps you have never noticed its curious bill, which is constructed so as to filter, through its toothed edges, the soft mud in which these birds love to dabble. The tongue of the duck is full of nerves, so that its sense of taste is very keen, and thus provided the bird can find out all that is savoury to its palate in puddles, ponds, etc., and throwing away all that is tasteless, swallow only ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... quaint farmhouse, such as might well go with two or three hundred acres of tolerably good land, tolerably well farmed by an active old-fashioned tenant, who, though he did not use mowing-machines nor steam-ploughs nor dabble in chemical experiments, still brought an adequate capital to his land and made the capital yield a very fair return of interest. The supper was laid out in a good-sized though low-pitched parlour with a glazed door, now wide open, as were ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... small, scantily-equipped station. No beds, no washing conveniences, no table, no chairs; just the wall seats, with a roof above them and the pump water at the end of the platform to drink from and dabble in. The distressed man arrived, harrassed and anxious, only to be met by a round-faced, laughing wife and nine round-faced, laughing children, who all made sport of their "camping" experience, and assured him ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... scribbling lampoons against his betters in a weekly Review,—"Fellow," I said, "were I twenty years younger, and you twenty years older, John Dangerous would vouchsafe to pink an eyelet-hole in your waistcoat. Did I care to dabble in your polite conversation or your belles lettres (of which I knew much more than ever you will know years before the Parish was at pains to fix your begetting on some one), I would answer your scurrilities in Print; but this I disdain, sirrah. Good stout Ash ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... lovely clear pools on the rocky shore, natural stone baths left full of water when the tide went out, sheltered from the wind by tall, dark, precipitous cliffs, and warmed by the sun; and there they used to dabble by the hour together. Anne went with them, and it was a pretty sight, the four young women in white chemises that clung to them when wet, and the three lovely children—little white nudities with bright brown hair—scampering over the rocks, splashing ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... between the house and river, we pushed off from the bank in a tiny boat just big enough for two. In the teeth of Harold's remonstrance I persisted in dangling over the boat-side to dabble in the clear, deep, running water. In a few minutes we were in it. Being unable to swim, but for my companion it would have been all up with me. When I rose to the surface he promptly seized me, and without much effort, clothes and all, swam with me to the bank, where we landed—a ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... where, after the manner of the time, he successfully defended several hundred theses against all comers, attracted wide attention, so that the Bishop gave him a professorship, and the Duke, who, like some other crowned heads of those days,—notably Henry VIII. and James I.,—liked to dabble in theology, made him a court theologian. But the duties of this position were uncongenial: a flippant duke, fond of putting questions which the wisest theologian could not answer, and laying out work which the young scholar evidently thought futile, apparently wearied ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... who try to 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
... is, for his sins, fated 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 fainting; and we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... 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 of the water, and ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... he had visited either the race-course or any other place of amusement. Now he might face his kind without fear that his pride should be mortified, and dabble in the fascinating agitations of the ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... labor, strive; drudge, slave; operate, manipulate, perform; ferment, effervesce. Antonyms: shirk, idle, dabble, loaf, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... have burlesque quotation put down by Act of Parliament, and all who dabble in it placed with him who can cite Scripture for his purposes,' said ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... religious papers are, the Observer, the Independent, the Protestant Churchman, the Church Journal, the Methodist, etc., etc. They are devoted principally to denominational and sectarian matters, but too frequently dabble in politics to an extent that renders them more partisan than laymen care to ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... though a profound or anything approaching a professional study of philosophy was discouraged among the true Romans—more than once the professional philosophers were banished from the capital—there were few cultivated persons who did not to some extent dabble in it, and even go so far as to profess an adherence to one school or another. None of these men believed in the "Roman religion" as administered by the state, although many of them were administering ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... 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 in ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... know about the business? About as much as Fred does about art. He has spent thousands on the farm, and it has been a dead loss from the beginning. He knew as much about farming as Carrie does. Stuff and nonsense! And then he must needs dabble in shares for Spanish mines; and that new-fangled Wheal Catherine affair that has gone to smash lately. Every penny gone; and a wife, and—how many of you ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... water, water, wet; moisten &c 339; dilute, dip, immerse; merge; immerge, submerge; plunge, souse, duck, drown; soak, steep, macerate, pickle, wash, sprinkle, lave, bathe, affuse^, splash, swash, douse, drench; dabble, slop, slobber, irrigate, inundate, deluge; syringe, inject, gargle. Adj. watery, aqueous, aquatic, hydrous, lymphatic; balneal^, diluent; drenching &c v.; diluted &c v.; weak; wet &c (moist) 339. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fate 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 a vast deal of good, and bears a good moral ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the making matches for herself, And daughters, brothers, sisters, kith or kin, Arranging them like books on the same shelf, There's nothing women love to dabble in More (like a stock-holder in growing pelf) Than match-making in general: 't is no sin Certes, but a preventative, and therefore That is, no doubt, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... wonderful love for the excitement of gambling- -take him away from the betting ring and he goes straight to the share market to dabble in gold and silver shares. The Great Humbug Gold Mining Company is floated on the Melbourne market—a perfect fortune in itself, which influential men are floating in a kind of semi-philanthropic manner to benefit mankind at large, and themselves in particular. Report by competent geologists; ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... it, how can there be any doubt as to the reply? What points of human interest has he left untouched? With what phase of life, character, or study does he fail to sympathize? So far from being the rough-hewn block 'dull fools' have supposed him, he is the most dilettante of great poets. Do you dabble in art and perambulate picture-galleries? Browning must be your favourite poet: he is art's historian. Are you devoted to music? So is he: and alone of our poets has sought to fathom in verse the deep mysteries of sound. Do you find it impossible to keep off theology? Browning has more ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... involving an even greater moral defect,—I mean a tendency, chiefly due, I think, to a very deep-seated pride,—to prefer inferior men as working colleagues in business. And yet it is clear that if Scott were to dabble in publishing at all, he really needed the check of men of larger experience, and less literary turn of mind. The great majority of consumers of popular literature are not, and indeed will hardly ever be, literary men; and that is precisely why a publisher who is not, in the main, literary,—who ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... has also become active. He desires to dabble in science. One day he studies the Arab mystics, Oriental legends, and the next, he studies the marine fauna, etc. His perceptions have never been so clear. His brain is in continual activity. "It is strange," he acknowledges, "what a different man I am becoming ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... to Bryan to say that he fully merited the honour conferred upon him; for never, since the days of Vulcan, was there a man seen who could daringly dabble in the fire as he did. He had a peculiar sleight-of-hand way of seizing hold of and tossing about red-hot coals with his naked hand, that induced one to believe he must be made of leather. Flames seemed to have no effect whatever on his sinewy arms when they licked around them; ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... yes. If Henry, there, will translate it And put it in verse and print as he promised To do when it happened. Will he do it? I doubt. He dislikes to dabble with rhyme and with measure. Says that good honest prose is the best and the sweetest If the words be well chosen, short, Saxon, and pithy. And that making of verse is the business of women, Of green boys at school, and of lovers when spooning. But ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... 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 ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... laughed. 'What a mixed piece of fact that is! past, present, and future, in one grand conglomerate. Do you suppose I shall ever again have a chance to dabble in land? And I thought you had ruled out the ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... immortal 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 latter type draws his extraordinary ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... not the dealing in livings but the thinking they can buy the Holy Ghost for money which vulgar rich people indulge in when they dabble in literature, ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... right to carry on trade. Arenas considered this tribute paid by the alcaldes as a fine imposed upon them for an infringement of the law; "for several ordinances were in existence, strenuously forbidding them to dabble in any kind of commerce, until it pleased his Catholic Majesty to grant them a dispensation." The latter sources of mischief were, however, abolished by royal decree in ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... eyes are fixed upon the guest in expectation of his reply. A wild shout of joy proclaims that he has said 'No, thank you.' Spoons are waved in the air, legs appear above the table-cloth in uncontrollable ecstasy, and eighty short fingers dabble in ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... of the 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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... necessary for one's all-round development to know all sides of life; that it adds not only to one's pleasure, but also to his knowledge of life and so to his personal power to try for himself every possible new experience. You are strong enough to dabble in every filthy pool you encounter, and then to let it alone and go on to another. You live your philosophy and, so far as others can see, although you and I know better, you are none the worse for it. You are a promising young architect, already winning wealth ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... 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 ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... United States and for the story of Abraham Lincoln. But you were never faddist or doctrinaire, and your practical bent showed itself in the keen interest you took in the noticing of political economy in which I used to dabble, and which we used to discuss by the hour. You seemed, without having studied text-books, to have an intuitive grasp of economic and fiscal truths which astonished me and others much better qualified to judge than I was. The real truth is that, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... colored people in particular, upon a great and important subject of truth; and that those who must be the most injured by it, will be the very class of people, whom he professes a desire to benefit. We much regret the fact, that there are but too many of our brethren, who undertake to dabble in literary matters, in the shape of newspaper and book-making, who are wholly unqualified for the important work. This, however, seems to be called forth by the palpable neglect, and indifference of those who have had the educational ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... unman me; first, with the scrambled tea which was the tardy substitute for an orderly lunch, then with the new and nauseous duty of filling the side-lights, which meant squatting in the fo'c'sle to inhale paraffin and dabble in lamp-black; lastly, with an all-round attack on my nerves as the night fell on our frail little vessel, pitching on her precarious way through driving mist. In a sense I think I went through the same sort of ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Since there are things that exist, a thing of all things there must needs be; In the thing of all things dabble ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... to 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 ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... "I, as an educationist, dabble a little in geology, mineralogy, and palaeontology. My friend is a botanist. You are Mr. Rawdon. Allow me, Mr. Rawdon, to introduce my friend Mr. Eugene Coristine, of Osgood Hall, Barrister, and my humble self, Farquhar ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... to cramps and chills has no business in the water, but if you start to go in swimming, go in all over. Don't be one of those chappies who prance along the beach, shivering and showing their skinny shapes, and then dabble their feet in the surf, pour a little sand in their hair, and think ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... blood strain back from their blanched faces Into their quivering hearts, with unknown dread, As that accuser pointed to the shape Before his feet. "Dogs, will ye lap his blood Before ye die? Make haste; for it grows cold! Ye will not, will not even dabble your hands In that red puddle of flesh, what? Are ye Spaniards? Come, come, I'll look at you, perchance there's one That's but a demi-devil and holds you back." And with the word Drake stepped among their ranks And read each face among the swarthy crew— The gorgeous soldiers, ringleted ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... he 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
... been ducks, we might dabble in mud: Or dogs, we might play till it ended in blood; So foul, or so fierce are their natures. But Thomas and William, and such pretty names, Should be cleanly and harmless as doves, or as lambs, Those lovely ...
— Divine Songs • Isaac Watts
... have 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 ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... of his 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 only for ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... 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
... and threw back his head to look up at the sketch of the donkey. "There were days when I couldn't look at that thing—couldn't face it. But I forced myself to put it here; and now it's cured me—cured me. That's the reason why I don't dabble any more, my dear Rickham; or rather Stroud himself is ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... her success 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 in the village, those with whom, day after day, time ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... sir," said he with the book, "how comes it that a young gentleman like you, a sedate student at the first appearance, should dabble in stocks and ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... 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
... being an onlooker," the Prince reflected. "There go the spirit of Russia and the spirit of Germany. You dabble in these things, my friend Dorminster. Can you guess what they are met for—for whom ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dabble in the water, Dinny," said Dick, wickedly. "The crocodiles snap at hands or feet held ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... one of God's rivers in the open air seems to me a sort of cheerful solemnity or semi-pagan act of worship. To dabble among dishes in a bedroom may perhaps make clean the body; but the imagination takes no ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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, which was to effect the transmutation of metals—he made no secret. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... one of the seven Suabians who went to hunt a monster,—"a Ungeheuer,"—and returned with a hare. Elsie Venner is not a hare; she is a wonderful creation; but she is a winter-snake. I confess that I have no patience, however, with those who pretend to show us summer-snakes, and would fain dabble with vice; who are amateurs in the diabolical, and drawing-room dilettanti in damnation. Such, as I have said before, are the aesthetic adorers of Villon, whom the old roue himself would have most despised, and the admirers of "Faustine," whom Faustina would have picked up between her thumb ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... playing at being newspaper-woman she was, and taking notes for London newspaper articles all the time. Had laid out to be a little tin imitation of Dora Corr, or, say, nickel-plated, with cast chasings. Was burning for an opening in the diplomatic go-betweening line; wanted to dabble in War Correspondence, and so on. But Van Busch gathered that the biggest egg in the little lady's nest of ambitions was the desire to do a flutter on the Secret ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... asserts that he has 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; ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... gratefully. "The commoner establishments, for the convenience of sailors and others of that class, at Dieppe, Calais,"—he shrugged his shoulders, comprehensively—"are impossible as resorts. In catering for the true devotees—for those who, unlike De Quincey, plunge and do not dabble—for those who seek to explore the ultimate regions of poppyland, for those who have learnt the mystery from the real masters in Asia and not in Europe—the enterprise conducted by Madame Jean supplied a ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... 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 called upon by the ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... Village—just as there are fakers everywhere else. Only, of course, the ardour of new ideas which sincerely animates the Village does lend itself to all manner of poses. And because of this a perfectly earnest movement will attract a number of superficial dilettanti who dabble in it until it is in disrepute. And, vice versa, a crassly artificial fad will, by its novelty and picturesqueness, draw some of the real thinking people. Such inconsistencies and discrepancies are bound to occur in any such mental crucible as Greenwich. And, moreover, if ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... 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 surroundings, and ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... his way. That would explain it all right.... He must be runnin' for pretty big stakes, for that kind of lad don't dabble in crime for six-and-eightpence.... Now for the layout. You've got three men shut up in Dalquharter House, who by this time have probably escaped. One of you—what's his name?—Heritage?—is in the old Tower, and you think that they think the Princess ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... With matted head a-dabble in the dust, And eyes tear-sealed in a saline crust I lie all loathly in my rags and rust— Yet learn that strange delight may ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... 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 ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... would have said she was afraid of it, or had some undefined antipathy which made it hateful to her. Such odd fancies are common enough in young persons in her nervous state. Many of these young people will jump up twenty times a day and run to dabble the tips of their fingers in water, after touching the most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and the kindly brightness of the new-risen sun was glinting between tree-trunks, the bush began to breathe naturally, and I was off at a trot for my morning dabble in ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... was strange, its effect upon the young man was at least equally unforeseen. Greif had always despised persons who professed to dabble in the supernatural, and had laughed to scorn all the so-called manifestations of spiritualism, mesmerism, and super- rational force. When he had heard that the great astronomer Zollner had written a book to explain ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... 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 ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... troubled 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 that, if we ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... themselves to churches, and that many of them are prostituting a Christian profession to the worst of purposes. But this does not prove that there is anything defective or wrong about the Christian religion. No, by no means. If clergymen descend from their sacred vocation to dabble with politics, and a thousand other things that a minister of Christ should not touch; or to use their ministerial influence to accomplish the most diabolical purposes, and thereby bring reproach on the Christian name, and a grievous curse on the nation—then assuredly, ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... 1840 to dabble in this question, and on the wrong side of it[152].... The matter passed from my mind, full of churches and church matters, in which I was now gradually acquiring knowledge. In 1841 the necessities of the whig government ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... proposals for change, which have long ago been threshed out and found wanting, or are obviously unpractical, he is merely showing that he has not studied the question. A fair analogy would be the case of a chemist or engineer who had recently begun to dabble in Greek in his spare moments, and who should undertake to emend the text of Sophocles. His suggestions would show that he knew no Greek, that he had never heard of Sir Richard Jebb, and that he was ignorant of all the results of scientific textual ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... 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 allow ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... 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
... appeared, and a vile rag-bag it was, like the life of a man written by a private detective from the reminiscences of under-servants. The worst of it is that such a compilation brings a man money, because there are always plenty of people who like to dabble in mud; and a ghoul is the most impervious of beings, probably because a ghoul of this species regards himself merely as an unprejudiced seeker after truth, and claims to be what he ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... as he fell a victim to the charms of Ann Donne, a widow of excessive sprightliness; but by that time he was too deeply enmeshed in the nets of intrigue to escape the just reward of those amateurs who dabble with critical situations. Abdul regarded him as a "milksop," and so he was from Abdul's full-blooded point of view; but I can also see in him a fresh testimony to the courage of our race. For he married the widow Ann, and that was a very ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... 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
... through and through,' as one young staff officer observed; 'it is taking a liberty with a man. Burnett always seems as though he is trying to turn a fellow inside out, to get at the other side of him'—not a very eloquent description of a would-be philosopher who loved to dabble a little in ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 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
... thrifty scheme. Of the beauty of his dissimulated anxiety and tenderness on these and various other suchlike heads, however, other examples will arise; for I see him now as fairly afraid to recognise certain anxieties, fairly declining to dabble in the harshness of practical precautions or impositions. The effect of his attitude, so little thought out as shrewd or as vulgarly providential, but in spite of this so socially and affectionally founded, could only be to make life interesting to us at the worst, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... priests with hooves, the lovers with horns, Rise in the starlight, one by one, They draw their knives on the spurting throats, They smear the column with blood of goats, They dabble the blood on hair and lips And wait like stones for the moon's eclipse. They stand like stones and stare at the sky Where the moon leers down like a half-closed eye. . . In the green moonlight still they ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... lowest price. "M. Ventvorth," he said, "I am a Tyrolese seigneur; I do not dabble, myself, in commissions and percentages. But if your influence with Sir Charles—we understand each other, do we not?—as between gentlemen—a little friendly present—no money, of course—but the equivalent of say 5 per cent in jewellery, on whatever sum above his bid to-day you induce ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... little of it sticking to the palm of the hand now. She understood what this meant. That neat little woman was by no means the sort of person to dabble habitually in tricks of that kind, and Beatrice suddenly recollected that wax was used for taking impressions of locks and keys and the like. But surely there could be nothing worth all that trouble in this room, she thought. ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... was in mood To dabble in blood: To wage a great war. Shall we have gold enough? 390 Shall we have ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... luxury of giving it, it can make little difference how it is taken; because whatever befals you, be it good or bad, it is equally a matter of exultation to her. Thus she has the satisfaction of saying, 'If poor Mrs. Dabble had but followed my advice, and not have taken these pills of Dr. Doolittle's, she would have been alive to-day, depend upon it;' or, 'If Sir Thomas Speckle had but taken advantage of a friendly hint I threw out some time ago, about the purchase of the Drawrent estate, he might have been a man worth ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... left the speculating 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
... to appease The nagging of her long disease, Comes day by day to dabble in This foamy sea ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... good armour; but such is not, assuredly, the opinion of the unlearned, either in this country or in Wales. But these mountaineers are altogether without learning, and are full of superstitions. Even with us, a man more learned than the commonalty is deemed, by them, to dabble in the black art; and it may well be that this reputation Glendower has obtained is altogether due to the fact that he has much knowledge, whereas the people have none. However that may be, there is no doubt that the Welsh people are mostly ignorant; and that, at the call of this Glendower, ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... You're all upset, and you deserve a heap more than scolding.... But I like you." Hilda was always direct. "You're more or less of a little idiot, with your insane notions and your Joan of Arc silliness, but I like you. You're not fit to be left alone. I'm in charge.... So go and dabble cold water on your eyes, so you don't look like Nazimova in the last act, and come along with. me. We'll take a drive, and then I'm coming back to stay all night with you.... Yes, I am," she said, with decision, as Ruth started to object. "You ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... couldn't tell you that. I never myself trust him with a case, for I will not employ barristers who dabble in politics. But you can get his address from the 'Gazette des Tribuneaux'; he ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... failure. It is the index of his life, the measure of 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 that ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... stocks, 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
... and say, "luck, sir; nonsense. There's no such thing as luck. Live on a crust, sir; that's the only way for a man to get on in the world." The old gentleman quite forgets that if his first venture in the Chutnee East Indiaman had been a failure; or his first dabble in the stocks had not been followed by the battle of Leipsic; or his senior partner, who had nine-tenths of the profits of the business, had not departed this life suddenly in an apoplectic fit, he would have held a very different position in the world, and probably ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... In London I worked as a clerk, and being clever I soon made money. I got hold of a man who invented penny toys, and saw the possibilities of making a fortune. I really didn't, but I collected enough money to dabble in stocks and shares. The South African boom was on, and I made a thousand. Other speculations created more than a million out of my thousand, and now I have over ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... differs from his poor wool-gathering brother, the 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
... of providing him with a wife would be very good if it were feasible. I should be very glad to see him settled. But if he will marry no one but Florence Mountjoy he must remain unmarried. Augustus has had his hand in that business, and don't let us dabble in it." Then the squire gave the lawyer full instructions as to the will which was to be made. Mr. Grey and Mr. Bullfist were to be named as trustees, with instructions to sell everything which it would be in the squire's legal power to bequeath. The books, the ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... on that account, was shaking in his shoes. But on making inquiries we could find no trace of any complaint, official or semi-official, having been made, and further, the Julie was accused of having tried to dabble in the slave trade. Here was a puzzle for us. What were we to do? Say nothing to Pepel? Then he would laugh us to scorn, for his conscience pricked him, we knew. All his canoes had taken to flight when we arrived, and not a single negro had boarded us. Threaten ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... idler parts of his life, Howard had been pleased to dabble somewhat in medicine, after the manner of the gentlemen of his time. This stood him in good part upon his travels, and made him familiar with the various forms of disease that especially afflicted prisons and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... 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 ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... evidence of love and confidence in their wives, these colonial gentlemen were not, however, especially anxious to have womankind dabble in politics or other public affairs. The husbands were willing enough to explain public activities of a grave nature to their help-meets, and sometimes even asked their opinion on proposed movements; but the men did not hesitate to think ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... "anti-Semitism," goes so far as to suggest that the gift of ceremonial magic was "the answer of Jewry to Christendom as a counter-blast" to "centuries of persecution."[838] It would be well if every Gentile who has been tempted to dabble in occultism were to realize ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... broking-trade in love; Employ'd in all 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
... accounted for by the matter-of-course statement that the Musgraves usually "drank,"—just as the Allardyces notoriously perpetuated the taint of insanity, and the Townsends were proverbially unable "to let women alone," and the Vartreys were deplorably prone to dabble in literature. These things had been for a long while just as they were to-day; and therefore (Lichfield estimated) they ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... 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. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... pause; 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 ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cliff back of it and on both sides is completely covered with thick, furry mosses, and the white fall shines against the green like a silver instrument in a velvet case. Here come the Gabriel lads and lassies from the commonplace orange groves, to make love and gather ferns and dabble away their hot holidays in the cool pool. They are fortunate in finding so fresh a retreat so near their homes. It is the Yosemite of San Gabriel. The walls, though not of the true Yosemite type either in form or sculpture, rise to a height of nearly two thousand ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... father's, an artist, named Welthorp, a great traveller, but kind and good, who took me to Australia—in fact, almost all round the world—and finally to London, where he and his wife died—both died while I was a mere lad. But I had learnt to dabble and paint, and so, making the most of my knowledge, have managed by degrees to struggle up to ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... which dispersed like blackish sand at the slightest sound, the long-legged flies and the water-beetles that ruffled into circling silvery ripples the stagnant surface of the pools; all that silent teeming life which drew them to the water and impelled them to dabble and stand in it, so that they might feel those millions of existences ever and ever gliding past their limbs. At other times, when the day was hot and languid, they would betake themselves beneath the voiceful shade of the forest and listen to the serenades ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... 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
... too," Burke nodded. "I have had my men out shadowing them and their friends. They tell me that the Annenbergs hold salons—I suppose you would call them that—attended by numbers of men and women of high social and intellectual position who dabble in radicalism and all sorts of things." "Who are the other leaders?" asked Craig. "Have you ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the sex," she said. "It's because I dabble in paints and things that I thought of these flowers first as a picture. But I assure you I'm just as much given to plundering them to set off my hair and dress as any daughter of Eve," wherewith she placed ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... sought it not by any baser lure; Man wrongs, and Time avenges, and my name 50 May form a monument not all obscure, Though such was not my Ambition's end or aim, To add to the vain-glorious list of those Who dabble in the pettiness of fame, And make men's fickle breath the wind that blows Their sail, and deem it glory to be classed With conquerors, and Virtue's other foes, In bloody chronicles of ages past. I would have had my Florence great and free;[290] Oh Florence! Florence![291] unto me thou wast ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... far, by help of our first example, in the etymology of our entire class, as to rest in the easily memorable root 'dab,' short for dabble, as the foundation of comprehensive nomenclature. But the earlier (if not Aryan!) root 'dip,' must be taken good heed to, also, because, as we further study the customs of aquatic chickens, we shall find that they really mass themselves under the three great heads of 'Duckers,' birds that duck ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... and also drink as much as they can. Not only is the water itself blessed, but all the streams, and wells, and fountains in the neighbourhood are equally benefited. It is curious to see the way in which the people dabble in the water, throw it over their persons, though it freezes as it falls, and drink of it till they can drink no more; all this being done in the belief that the water is holy, and that they will be especially benefited thereby. The ceremony in summer is ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... 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 affected heavy stakes, believing in the innocence of her heart that they were exhilarating ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... 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 oranges, and He climbed ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... succession. Then it remained quiet, and Hamar knew, by a subtle change in the atmosphere, that all occult manifestations—for that night at least—were at an end. The ladies were, of course, dying to know what had happened; and like most ladies, who dabble in spiritualism, were ready to believe anything they were told. Hamar, who had no intention whatever of telling them what had actually occurred, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... Tom Bond was dead. He lay flat on his face with his hands stretched afore him, and a revolver, the daps of mine, had fallen from his hand and dropped a foot away from it. And, looking close, I saw a big dabble of blood about him, that had come from ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... taken stop-over checks for the Glimmerglass; and now they came loitering along through the dead bulrushes, murmuring gently, in soft, mild voices, of delicious minnows and snails, and pausing a moment now and then to put their heads under and dabble in the mud for some particularly choice morsel. The lynxes crouched and waited, while their stubby tails twitched nervously, their long, narrow pupils grew still narrower, and their paws fumbled about among the dry pine-needles, feeling for ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... 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 world of ideas concerned—from all those stifling notions of sin, ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... more finely strung, more sensitive, more keenly alive to every passing sensation. Of course there are many so-called 'ARTISTS' who are mere shams of the real thing; persons who, having a little surface-education in one or the other branch of the arts, play idly with the paint-brush, or dabble carelessly in the deep waters of literature,—or borrow a few crotchets and quavers from other composers, and putting them together in haste, call it ORIGINAL COMPOSITION. Among these are to be found the self-called 'professors' of painting; the ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... the tips your clients slip into your hand, my dear young lady," he advised, "and don't dabble in what you don't understand. The Stock Exchange is a den of thieves, and Maurice here and I are ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to make good sculpture is to let the youth thumb and punch and dabble in wet clay, and see what he can make of it; and the way to make a painter is to give the boy now a burnt stick, and at another time a pin and a back of a looking-glass, and see what he can delineate with such materials as these and with all other materials with which a line can be ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... expected intelligence. Martha in the meantime frowned most ominously on Richie, who went on undauntedly to inform the king, "that his deceased father-in-law, a good careful man in the main, had a' touch of worldly wisdom about him, that at times marred the uprightness of his walk; he liked to dabble among his neighbour's gear, and some of it would at times stick to ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... vital lie but a lie?" the White Logic challenges. "Come. Fill your glass and let us examine these vital liars who crowd your bookshelves. Let us dabble ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London |
