"Avocation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... abrupt departure would be less shocking than to stay and take a formal leave of my lover, whose heart was of such a delicate frame, that, after I told him I should one day withdraw myself in his absence, he never came home from the chase, or any other avocation, without trembling with apprehension ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... am only a poor ignorant man. But the type you speak of does exist. In Switzerland, I believe, a bell-ringer has for years been collecting material for a heraldic memorial. I should think," he continued, laughing, "that his avocation would interfere with ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... school of design. There were some really beautiful lanterns and wall brackets and reading lamps shown, designed and executed by young women who are self supporting by day and can give only a few evening hours, or an occasional day, to the pursuit of their avocation. One hanging lantern of terra cotta was very fine indeed, and there were many notable fixtures. There must be easily tens of thousands of young people who are students in the various schools of design, manual training high ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... public hangman in the future by seizing the sick man and hanging him. His friends, hearing of this intention, propped the dying Ketch up in bed, and he, being by trade a shoemaker, had the tools and materials of his trade placed before him. He made a pretence of plying his avocation, and the townsmen, thinking his lease of life was in no danger of a natural termination, allowed him to lie in peace. He then speedily passed away quietly in his bed, and the outwitted burghers found themselves without a hangman, and without ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... cannot quite understand," he said, "is the exact meaning of that word 'abduction.' Why should I be suspected of forcibly removing a harmless and worthy young man from his regular avocation, and, as you term it, abducting him, which I presume means keeping him bound and gagged and imprisoned? I do not eat young men. I do not even care for the society of young men. I am not naturally a gregarious person, but I think I would go so far," he added, with a bow towards Miss ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... isolation and solitude, or whether need had driven him to this means of earning money, no one knew, and he did not say. But once having entered on the life of a guide, he threw himself into it as heartily as if it had been his life-long avocation, and speedily became one of the best guides in the region. It was observed, however, that whenever he could do so he avoided taking parties in which there were ladies. Sometimes for a whole season it would happen that he had not once been seen in charge of such a party. ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the boys of the town. When about half-way from its end, I turned off to the right, and followed a wooded lane to the house of an honest surf-man, Captain George Bogart, who had recently left his old home on the beach, beside the restless waves of the Atlantic, and had resumed his avocation as ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... crowds they were capable of making trouble and those who had fallen upon "gringoes" in the region had despatched their victims thoroughly, leaving them mutilated and robbed even of their clothing. The charming part of it all was one could never know which of these slinking fellows was a bandit by avocation and saving up his unvented anger for the boss who ordered him about at ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... buying great tracts. Temporary officials have eager eyes fixed on the Mexican grants. At all the landings and along the new roads, once trails, little settlements are springing up, for your unlucky argonaut turns to the nearest avocation; inns, stables, lodging-houses and trading-tents are waited on by men of every calling and profession. Each wanderer turns to the easiest way of amassing wealth. The settlers must devise all their own institutions. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... do for a living, an avocation something you do for a while, a vacation something you couldn't stick at very long without being dead broke ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... formed in the '70s by newspaper writers and men working in the arts or interested in them. It had grown to a membership of 750. It still kept for its nucleus painters, writers, musicians and actors, amateur and professional. They were a gay group of men, and hospitality was their avocation. Yet the thing which set this club off from all others in the world was the ...
— The City That Was - A Requiem of Old San Francisco • Will Irwin
... approach the young lady with a distinct proposal of marriage; and these, it is hardly necessary to say, had been firmly, but as pleasantly as possible, sent to the right-about. This class of lovers gave Lucy no trouble whatever; bold as they might be in the pursuit of their lawless avocation, they were diffident to the verge of absurdity in the presence of beauty, if associated with dignity and refinement; they were painfully conscious of their uncouth bearing and manners; and Lucy had little difficulty in keeping them at ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... her name. Vocation, school-teacher. Present avocation, getting lost in the snow. Age, yum-yum (the Persian for twenty). Take to the woods if you would describe Miss Adams. A willow for grace; a hickory for fibre; a birch for the clear whiteness of her skin; for eyes, the blue sky seen through treetops; the silk in cocoons for her hair; her voice, ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... portrait anyways purporting to be the whale's, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta, in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless sculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits, every conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any of them actually came into being. No wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... little drive in the runabout with me. She came down looking as fresh as a wild rose, in a soft, white dress with some kind of light greenery about it, and a pale green sash around her waist, and her pretty, sunset hair uncovered. If there is any pleasanter avocation for an old fellow than driving in an open buggy with a girl like that, I don't know it. She talked charmingly: about my travels; about her college friends; about Eastridge; and at last about her disappointment in not going ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... committed a crime, it was the master who must sue or be sued. In many of the States there has been special legislation, giving married women the right to property inherited or received by bequest, or earned by the pursuit of any avocation outside the home; also giving them the right to sue and be sued in matters pertaining to such separate property; but not a single State of this Union has ever secured the wife in the enjoyment of her right ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... side issue with Mr. Key. I have often thought how interesting it is that a man may work all the days of his life at his profession or vocation, and some avocation, like verse-making, may carry his name down to posterity; like Izaak Walton, who had an insurance business in London, but is remembered now only ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... him," says Mr. Tweddel, "if after the massacre of Ismail he was perfectly satisfied with the conduct of the day. He said, he went home and wept in his tent." Though Suwarrow spared but little time from his military avocation for social intercourse, his tenderness for children was so great that he could not bear to pass them without notice. He would stop, embrace, and bless them whenever he met them: that he fondly loved his own is sufficiently ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... unequalled. Here blooms a cluster of beautiful flowers, covered as it were by a glass shade, but which turns out to be only water. There a miniature palace is in course of erection, with crowds of workmen in its different storeys, each man at his avocation with hammer and chisel, pulley and wheel, and the grave architect himself directing their labour. All this is set in motion by water, and is not a mere doll's house, but a symmetrical model. Then we enter a subterranean ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... shall be briefly told," said Lanyere. "You are aware, Sir Francis, that in the pursuit of my avocation I am often led into the most dangerous quarters of the metropolis, and at hours when the peril to any honest man is doubled. Adventures have not unfrequently occurred to me when so circumstanced, and ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... induce you to give yours up. I'll build a separate one for you right beside mine, any time you say the word, and you shall pursue your avocation in perfect freedom. All I object to is your making the thing your vocation. I know of ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... returned to the powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins was still pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master said was inaudible in the library, but the man hurried out in front of him, and was heard clattering down the ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... cared for and comfortable," why belie ourselves? Malcome's influence is, and always has been, with the whites, and manifestly good in the preservation of order and obedience on the part of the slaves. He pursues his avocation with spirit and enterprise, while he is subjected to menial and oppressive laws. His father visited New York, and was forbidden to return. He appealed again and again, set forth his claims and his integrity to the State and her laws, but all was of no avail. He was hopelessly banished, ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... may make brilliant successes in purely mental vocations, as the result of the development of their intellects, and may keep themselves in a fair degree of health and strength by games, exercise, mountain climbing, farming, or some such avocation, they are, nevertheless, never quite so well satisfied as when they have something to do which not only gives them opportunity for the use of their intellects, but also involves a certain degree of physical activity as a part ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... makes you homely, make you sage, The sphere of wisdom is the sphere of age. 'Tis true, when beauty dawns with early fire, And hears the flattering tongues of soft desire, If not from virtue, from its gravest ways The soul with pleasing avocation strays. 40 But beauty gone, 'tis easier to be wise; As harpers better ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... in the most secure places that they could find, and then, clothing themselves in their priestly robes, they assembled in the chapel, and resumed their exercises of devotion. To be found in so sacred a place and engaged in so holy an avocation would have been a great protection from any Christian soldiery; but the monks entirely misconceived the nature of the impulses by which human nature is governed, in supposing that it would have any restraining influence upon the pagan Danes. The first thing the ferocious marauders did, ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... careful to keep them, if possible, from any knowledge of their mode of life. Further, they are charitable to the poor, and, in a way, religious; or, perhaps, superstitious would be a better term. Thus, they often go to church on Sundays, and do not follow their avocation on Sunday nights. On New Year's Eve, their practice is to attend the Watch Night services, where, doubtless, poor people, they make those good resolutions that form the proverbial pavement of the road to Hell. Nearly all of them drink more or less, as they say that ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... arrogate, nor permit in others. Keep cool, Elliott, or else change your profession. A man who cannot hold his temper in leash, and who flies emotional signals from every feature in his face, has slender chance of success in an avocation which demands that body and soul, heart and mind, abjure even secret signal service, and deal only in cipher. The youthful naivete with which you permit your countenance to reflect your sentiments, renders ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... investigation of any subject be the proper avocation of the philosopher," says Strabo, "geography, the science of which we propose to treat, is certainly entitled to a high place; and this is evident from many considerations. They who first undertook to handle the matter were distinguished men. Homer, Anaximander the Milesian, and Hecaeus ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... positive daily, however, that, in view of these stimulating aspirations, he could no longer pursue his embarrassing avocation. ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... Neihardt, The Poet's Town.] Sometimes he gives them the plaintive assurance that he is overtaxed with imaginary work. But occasionally he seems to be really stung by their reproaches, and tries to convince them that by following a strenuous avocation he has done his bit for society, and has earned his hours of ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... are very superstitious and have great faith in omens. The dress of the men and women resembles that of the Hindus. Infanticide was formerly common among them, but it is said to have entirely died out. They were also formerly robbers by avocation; and though they have improved they are still ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... men are these reporters of newspapers in general, I mean English newspapers; surely if there be any class of individuals who are entitled to the appellation of cosmopolites, it is these; who pursue their avocation in all countries indifferently, and accommodate themselves at will to the manners of all classes of society: their fluency of style as writers is only surpassed by their facility of language in conversation, and their attainments in classical ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... he should have something to do in order to occupy his proper position as bread-winner of the family, the widow's means being limited and it being as much as she could do to support herself and Lorischen out of her savings, without having to take again to teaching—which avocation, indeed, her health of late years had rendered her unable to continue, had she been desirous ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in such a state of nerves—if I may use the expression, in such a state of funk—that every passer-by, however innocent, is looked at with suspicion by his neighbour if his avocation happens to take him abroad between the hours of one ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Winona viewed the latest avocation of her charge with little enthusiasm. It compelled a certain measure of her difficult respect, especially when she beheld him worm his truck through crowded River Street with a supreme disregard for the imminent catastrophe—which somehow never ensued. But ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... education would permit him. He was more fitted for an engineer or an agriculturist than for a soldier, although there is no doubt that he would have made a very brave soldier, if such was to have become his avocation. ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... only brightened by one constant hope. It was a strange existence for the lad on the threshold of his young manhood, and many who knew something of his way of life wondered at the steady and dogged persistence with which he pursued his avocation. He appeared to have reached, while yet not much past his boyhood, the grave, passionless calm which comes to most men only after they have outlived the passion of their youth. He was regarded as a sharp, hard-working young man, with a keen eye for business, and honourable and ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... of communication between man and the unseen. The invisible voice could reach the invisible power that permeates all nature, animating all natural forms. As success depended upon help from this mysterious power, in every avocation, in every undertaking, and in every ceremonial, the Indian appealed to this power through song. When a man went forth to hunt, that he might secure food and clothing for his family, he sang songs to insure the assistance of the unseen ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... people, broadens her interests, increases her usefulness, and, moreover, is often a recreation. The home-maker needs outside interests. The girl at home is never dull, or unhappy because she is dull, when she has an avocation in addition to her work and life in ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... propensities of our nature? It is true, these propensities may by an undue cultivation be so much increased, as to be productive of the most extensive mischief. The man who, for the sake of indulging his corporeal appetites, neglects every valuable pursuit, and every important avocation, cannot be too warmly censured. But it is no less true, that the passion of the sexes for each other, exists in the most innocent and uncorrupted heart. Can it then be reasonable to condemn such a moderate indulgence ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... house. The same meat is laid to you all, the most part look on it, others contemplate it, and exercise only their understandings about it, but there are some who taste it, and find sweetness in it, who digest it by meditation and solemn avocation of their hearts from the things of the world, and therefore some are fed, some ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... In a land where the theory of caste is not admitted, the relative respectability of the various professions is not quite the same as it is with us. There the profession does not disqualify if the man himself be right, nor the claim to the title of gentleman depend upon the avocation followed. I know of one or two clowns in the ring who are educated physicians, and not thought to be any the less gentlemen because they propound conundrums and perpetrate jests instead of prescribing ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... hands, and he was begging her autograph. If she had desired to escape, she could have done so—he is her devoted slave. And the doctor who went to examine her as to her sanity has stayed to talk to her about horse-breaking. That, as you know, is his avocation; and he has found in her a woman who knows more about it than he does. He sits there like a man entranced. They are all ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... seen," whispers Honeyman. "In entering one of these assemblies, one is struck with the immensity of London: and with the sense of one's own insignificance. Without, I trust, departing from my clerical character, nay, from my very avocation as incumbent of a London chapel,—I have seen a good deal of the world, and here is an assemblage no doubt of most respectable persons, on scarce one of whom I ever set eyes till this evening. Where does my good brother ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are the price of my critical faculty. All my former habits become suddenly fluid; it seems to me that I am beginning life over again, and that all my acquired capital has disappeared at a stroke. I am forever new-born; I am a mind which has never taken to itself a body, a country, an avocation, a sex, a species. Am I even quite sure of being a man, a European, an inhabitant of this earth? It seems to me so easy to be something else, that to be what I am appears to me a mere piece of arbitrary choice. I cannot possibly take an accidental structure of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of thirteen, after receiving a moderate education in reading, writing, and arithmetic, Paine left school, to follow his father's trade (stay-making.) Although disliking the business, he pursued this avocation for nearly five years. When about twenty years of age, however, he felt—as most enterprising young men do feel—a desire to visit London, and enter into the competition and chances of a metropolitan life. His natural dislike to his father's business ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... man who has been discomfited by the necessity of sneezing before servants. Anywhere else in the world, of course, such a pose would not have been convincing. But your Brazilian not only adopts fazenda fita as his own avocation, but also suspects it to be everybody else's too. And a young Brazilian of the leisure class would be horribly annoyed at being forced to so ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... excellent harbors, the secrets of its mysterious interior can only be conjectured. The natives are as degraded as any in the world; their principal vocation is hunting birds of paradise, whose plumes command high prices in the European markets; their chief avocation in recent years has been staging imitation cannibal feasts for the benefit of motion-picture expeditions. But, unknown and unproductive as it is at present, I would stake my life that New Guinea will be ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... to protect woman? From man, of course. Man is, then, woman's natural protector to protect her from man, her natural protector. He is to set himself the task of defending her from his injury of her, and he is charmed with the avocation. He will protect her as Abraham protected Sarah when he took her into Egypt. "Do so-and-so," said Abraham to Sarah, "that it may be well with me,—for thy sake." The history of the Chinese slave woman ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... with or against the grain; and when he encounters him in the ways of error, he leaps upon him joyously, scalps him in print before the eyes of men, kicks him gaily back into the paths of truth and soberness, and resumes his avocation with that peculiar zest an act of virtue does undoubtedly impart. Indeed, Mr. Whistler, so far from being the critic's enemy, is on the contrary the best friend that tradesman has ever had. For his function is to ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... needed it. My campaign was spoiled. It seemed to me that I was not rightly equipped for this awful business; that war was intended for men, and I for a child's nurse. I resolved to retire from this avocation of sham soldiership while I could save some remnant of my self-respect. These morbid thoughts clung to me against reason; for at bottom I did not believe I had touched that man. The law of probabilities decreed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... doors of the Church being open, and the altar richly drest, and the bells ringing as they are wont to do upon great festivals, at eight in the morning there assembled in the Church all the brethren of the Monastery, nineteen in number, the other fifteen being absent each in his avocation; and there were present with them Sancho de Ocaa, Merino and Chief Justice of the Monastery; Juan de Rosales, Pedro de Ruseras, and Juan Ruyz, squires of the house; master Ochoa de Artiaga, a mason, with his men; Andres de Carnica, and Domingo de Artiago, master Pablo ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... personage, with harsh inflexible features, a gaunt but muscular frame, and large bony hands. He was sipping a glass of cold gin and water, and smoking a short black pipe. His name was Marvel, and his avocation, which was as repulsive as his looks, was that of public executioner. By his side sat a remarkably stout dame, to whom he paid as much attention as it was in his iron nature to pay. She had a nut-brown skin, a swarthy upper lip, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... gravestones around Melrose Abbey are many names with the avocation added—John Smith, builder; William Hogg, mason—but many with the word portioner. They were small proprietors, but they were not distinguished for the careful cultivation which in France is known as "LA PETITE CULTURE." No; the portions ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... me, madam; that is the avocation of a man of taste. But for amusement, I positively know of nothing that can be called so, unless you dignify with that title the hopping once a fortnight to the sound of two or three squeaking fiddles, and ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... car platform and standing there until the conductor came along, when he would hop off, ride a block or two on the end of a truck, and then try a new car, so beating his way down-town. Then he arrived at his office. I have neglected to state that while invention was Jarley's avocation, he was by profession a lawyer, being the junior member of a highly successful firm, at the head of which was no less a person than the eminent William J. Baker, whose record at the bar is too well known ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... to give way to an indispensable avocation, I will make thee taste a little, in thy turn, of the plague of suspense; and break off, without giving thee the least hint of the issue of my further proceedings. I know, that those least bear disappointment, who love most ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... among the palatial residences of the Queen City. A rather restricted income compelled him to find a more unpretentious home than was perhaps in keeping with his avocation and position in life. Yet, carrying into practice the teaching he set forth, to "owe no man anything," and never live beyond one's income, he established his home in a portion of the city that was rather characterized by low rents than aristocratic abodes. However, they were respectable, and comfortably ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... name, my pore worm?' says the black-coat gent, addressin' of Texas; 'an' whatever avocation has you an' your ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... organism keyed up to a high pitch. These centres become fatigued easily and ought to be rested occasionally. Therefore, the student should relax at intervals, and engage in something remote from study. To forget books for an entire week-end is often wisdom; to have a hobby or an avocation is also wise. A student must not forget that he is something more than an intellectual being. He is a physical organism and a social being, and the well-rounded life demands that all phases receive expression. We grant that it is wrong to exalt the physical and stunt ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... were passing rapidly during which Douglas should have laid broad and deep the foundations of his professional career, if indeed law was to be more than a convenient avocation. These were formative years in the young man's life; but as yet he had developed neither the inclination nor the capacity to apply himself to the study of the more intricate and abstruse phases of jurisprudence. ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... hundred pounds to this country. With more wisdom than is generally exercised by Irish emigrants, instead of sinking all his means in buying a bush farm, he hired a very good farm in Cavan, with cattle, and returned to his old avocation. The services of his daughter, who was an excellent dairymaid, were required to take the management of the cows; and her brother brought a wagon and horses all the way from the ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... off in a body and made their way to the town. It was a matter of extreme surprise to find no symptom of the least excitement anywhere as they went along. The population was perfectly calm; every one was pursuing his ordinary avocation; the cattle were browsing quietly upon the pastures that were moist with the dew of an ordinary January morning. It was about eight o'clock; the sun was rising in the east; nothing could be noticed to ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... was an old Yale man and that his avocation in life seemed to be tennis. The engineers had a good court in the woods and after Tuck found that Jim liked the game, he took the boy over to the court every afternoon before supper and beat him with monotonous regularity. And Jim was a ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... archaeological researches, in every kind of learned inquiry. Their intellectual interests were so catholic and so vigorous that they were not contented with parish and pulpit, and in some cases it would seem that the avocation was as important as ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... not prostitution as we understand it. The present in such a case is merely part of a kind of courtship leading to a temporary relationship. The woman more or less retains her social position and is not forced to make an avocation of selling herself because henceforth no other career is possible to her. When Cook came to New Zealand his men found that the women were not impregnable, "but the terms and manner of compliance were as decent as those in marriage among us," and according "to their notions the agreement was ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of wonder to some that Dana, who achieved a great literary success in the book which he wrote when a young man, did not pursue literature as an avocation, if not as a vocation. He published but one other book, a narrative of a trip to Cuba made in 1859, and he wrote a few magazine articles. The explanation must be found in the temperament and character of the man. His "Two Years Before the Mast'' is a vivid representation of what he saw and experienced ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... country, no Negro permitted to run as engineer on a locomotive, most of the mines closed against us. Labor-unions—carpenters, painters, brick-masons, machinists, hackmen, and those supplying nearly every conceivable avocation for livelihood have banded themselves together to better their condition, but, with few exceptions, the black face has been left out. The Negroes are seldom employed in our mercantile stores. At this we do not wonder. Some day we ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the Devil!" Possibly this ghost had been a rabid teetotaller in the flesh, and continued to have a dislike to the publican's trade after he had become discarnate. At any rate the present occupants, who follow a different avocation, do not appear ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... distinguishes between business, occupation, employment, engagement, and avocation: "Business occupies all of a person's thoughts, as well as his time and powers; occupation and employment occupy only his time and strength; the first is most regular—it is the object of his choice; the second is causal—it depends ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... a sensual, ostentatious, and luxurious people, they accordingly wasted their fortunes by an extravagance in their living which has had no parallel. The pleasures of the table and the cares of the kitchen were the most serious avocation of the aristocracy in the days of the greatest corruption. They had around them regular courts of parasites and flatterers, and they employed even persons of high rank as their chamberlains and stewards. Carving was taught in celebrated schools, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... of a permanent business or profession, however, the most interesting men I know are those who have an avocation as well as a vocation. I mean a taste or work quite apart from the business of life. This revives, inspires, and cultivates them perpetually. It matters little what it is, if only it is real and personal, is large enough to ...
— Why go to College? an Address • Alice Freeman Palmer
... graces of two or three men into one! I'd almost like to be a man in this decade, a young, strong man, for there are such splendid giants to slay! To be sure, a woman can always buckle on the sword, and that is rather a delightful avocation, after all; but somehow there are comparatively few men nowadays who care greatly to wear swords or have them buckled on. There is no inspiration in trying to buckle on the sword of a man who never saw one, and who uses it wrong end foremost, and ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with which I clung to my avocation as an educator also influenced my action in this matter. Even if I could not say truly that I had a Fatherland, I must yet acknowledge that every boy, that every child, who might perhaps later on come to be educated ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... heard. It has been indicated that he was quick-witted, because he had to be, in the very nature of his avocation. Just now his brain was working rather more rapidly than usual, even: which was one reason why the light had leaped into ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... words so nearly alike. Vocation is the employment, business or profession one follows for a living; avocation is some pursuit or occupation which diverts the person from such employment, business ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... departure of the guests. Emil, therefore, had come home to fall heir in due time to the business, and prior to the ceremonies attending that event, he was to be his father's lieutenant, practicing his avocation as an ornithologist, whose specialty was rare birds, at leisure moments. Emil enjoyed also the work of the taxidermist, and loved dearly to cut and stuff. Jerry, the wonderful cat of the glass case in the office, gave only a hint of his skill and the remarkable ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... I have felt as a great and serious loss through the whole period of my existence. See to it that you place a just value upon these privileges, and that you do not abuse them. Whilst most of you, I trust, are fitting yourselves for the employment of farming as an avocation, some, perhaps, may be looking forward to other professions and pursuits. I, however, on this occasion, must confine my remarks to those of ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... till the ground, and muse along the odoriferous furrows of our low lands, uninterrupted either by stones or stumps; it is there that the salubrious effluvia of the earth animate our spirits and serve to inspire us; every other avocation of our farms are severe labours compared to this pleasing occupation: of all the tasks which mine imposes on me ploughing is the most agreeable, because I can think as I work; my mind is at leisure; my labour flows from instinct, as well as that of my horses; there is ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... more a place of ships, and thus naturally was still more developed the race of Deal boatmen, who were, and are to the present time, daily accustomed to launch and land through the surf which runs in rough weather on their open beach; and whose avocation was to pilot the vessels anchoring in or leaving the Downs, and to help those in distress on the ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... said to be pleasures in madness known only to madmen. There are certainly miseries in idleness, which the Idler only can conceive. These miseries I have often felt and often bewailed. I know by experience, how welcome is every avocation that summons the thoughts to a new image; and how much languor and lassitude are relieved by that officiousness which offers a momentary amusement to him who is unable to find it ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... of aversion and terror to the peaceful inhabitants of the land, his avocation being to challenge quiet country farmers to single combat. As the law of the land stood in Norway, a man who declined to accept a challenge, forfeited all his possessions, even to the wife of his bosom, as a poltroon unworthy of the protection of the law, and every item of ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... her husband, had chosen for himself a gentler avocation than his wife's, and one which brought him greater peace of mind—proprietor of the big red stable which spread itself over half a block, he had unconsciously defined himself, as well as his place of business, by having printed in huge white letters with black edging across the ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... him singing over the brat when he is not eating; or see him eating when he is not keeping baby. Besides which, there comes into his house a continual round of visitors that puts me in mind of the luncheon hour at home. As he has thus no ostensible avocation, we have named him "the W.S." to give a flavour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... aim of the institution is to examine, plan, and organize such branches of industrial avocation as are applicable to females, and open up new avocations of useful industry compatible with the intellectual and mechanical capabilities of the sex, not forgetting their delicacy, and the untutored position of females for practical application in all industrial ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Hale said every man needed "both a vocation and an avocation"—something by which he earned his living and something by which he maintained his interest in activity. It is the avocation that must be planned for. The vocation is often thrust upon one by necessity or chance association. If every aged person had ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... finished our cradles late upon Saturday night, but delayed working until Monday. A few of the miners pursued their avocation on the Sunday, but the majority devoted the day to rest—smoking and sleeping in the shade alternately. I walked through the washings, and heard that many of the miners had been taken ill with intermittent fever, a circumstance which did not astonish ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... holiday. Howard was shown into the study which Mr. Sandys had improved and enlarged. It was a big room, with an immense, perfectly plain deal table in the middle, stained a dark brown; and the Vicar showed Howard with high glee how each of the four sides of the table was consecrated to a different avocation. "My accounts end!" he said, "my sermon side! my correspondence end! my genealogical side!" There were a number of small dodges, desks for holding books, flaps which could be let up and down, slits ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... now artfully wrapped, leant over the railing and listened; and opposite the nympham discentem there was a capering and acute-eared young satirist of a crossing-sweeper, who had left his neighboring professional avocation and chance of profit, in order to listen to the tale of the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the pulpit, in the medical profession, and especially in political life, tact is the sine qua non to the highest degree of individual success. However gifted one may be, he cannot win conspicuous laurels in any calling or avocation, if he be deficient in tactfulness. The man who best understands human nature, knows how to approach people, and possesses the art of leading them, is the one who will invariably have the largest following and will possess the greatest amount ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... its spokesman and attorney, as he was spokesman and attorney for other victims of injustice. It was no accident that the hero of the play was a lawyer by vocation and avocation. For the hero was Herzl himself, and the transformation which unfolded in Dr. Jacob Samuel was the transformation which was ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... states there has been special legislation, giving to married women the right to property inherited, or received by bequest, or earned by the pursuit of any avocation outside of the home; also, giving her the right to sue and be sued in matters pertaining to such separate property; but not a single state of this Union has ever secured the wife in the enjoyment of her right to the joint ownership of the joint earnings of the marriage copartnership. ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... sculptor must carve, the musician must score or play or sing, the actor must act,—each with no more than the merest coquettings with sister arts. Otherwise his genius is apt to suffer from what are side-issues for temperament. To many minds a taste, and even a singular capacity, for an avocation has injured the work ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... appointed at the meeting of citizens held at the Chamber of Commerce July 23d, deeming that the allaying of excitement is the first step toward restoring order, would urge upon all citizens disposed to aid therein the necessity of pursuing their usual avocation, and keeping all their employees at work, and would, therefore, request that full compliance be accorded to this demand of the committee. The committee are impressed with the belief that the police force now being organized will be able to arrest and disperse all riotous assemblages, ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... is not difficult for a stranger to acquire a sufficient knowledge of the language to enable him to converse with the natives who inhabit the coasts and are in the habit of meeting the whalers who frequent the nothern waters in the pursuit of their avocation. There is a kind of pigeon English in use in these regions that enables the strangers to communicate with the natives and make themselves understood, though they would understand but little of a conversation between two natives. As an illustration, the word "notimer" means "where," and "ki-yete" ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... young man turned to flight the Chilian insurrectionists, who were breathing out threatening and slaughter against the great Northern Republic. There is an undoubted fascination in the picturesque and adventurous life of the war correspondent. One must, of course, have a distinct bent for the avocation, and if he is to succeed he must possess certain salient attributes. He must expose himself to rather greater risks than fall to the lot of the average fighting man, without enjoying any of the happiness of retaliation which stirs the blood of the latter; the correspondent ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... demonstration! The keener the mentality controlling the muscles, the more satisfactory the work accomplished. The more interested and the healthier and happier the laborer is in his work, the easier it becomes for him to produce superior results. For centuries, farm work has been considered the natural avocation of the ignorant and the illiterate! Strange as it may appear, it seems to have been generally conceded that the typical clodhopper was the ordained farmer! That this perverted idea regarding the requirements of a tiller of the soil, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... told me that he would teach me, provided I behaved myself well. He desired I would come to his cabin every afternoon at six o'clock, a time which interfered little with my avocation of "Poor Jack," and that he would give me a lesson. Before he had finished talking, one of the lieutenants of the hospital sent for him; and Ben remained behind, to point out to me how valuable my knowing how to read and write might one ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... Latham, Earthman, age thirty, occupation space drifter, avocation tsith drinker, awakened on this most ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
... Mr. Coulson," he answered. "At any rate, my question had nothing to do with your other very interesting avocation. What I wanted to ask you was whether you could tell me anything about a compatriot ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spirit and the letter of his family motto. Permitting us again to refer to honest Falstaff, it implied that they were "gentlemen of the night;" and he was not one who would loll upon his pillow when his "avocation" called ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... he occupied, which was many stories high, and contained a great number of rooms. He housed in it a large family, several apprentices, two shopmen, and his wife's sister, Dinah Morse, at such times as the latter was not out nursing the sick, which was her avocation ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... with keenest enjoyment. Insurance writing might be said to be his vocation—a sort of daily-bread affair, well executed, because one should not quarrel with his sustenance—with librettos for operas, and poems and essays as an avocation. Fate must have doomed his operas in the very beginning, for despite some delicious productions, captivating in words and spirit, and set to slashing music, they go unsung because a a ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... it was tolerably well done, I think myself," replied the captain, who, like all of mankind, was more or less vain, and prided himself peculiarly upon his skill in his own avocation. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... hostile to the ruling classes of society; and the object of the members is to establish a republican form of government within their city. They are largely merchants or artisans; but they concern themselves with wider interests than those of trade, and often insist that no man, of whatever avocation, shall remain in the city ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... clean cap and apron, and was sitting on the north porch, making an unbleached cotton shirt for Mr. Peter Hill, who always wore unbleached shirts at harvest-time. Mrs. Hill was a thrifty housewife. She had pursued this economical avocation for some little time, interrupting herself only at times to "shu!" away the flocks of half-grown chickens that came noisily about the door for the crumbs from the table-cloth, when the sudden shutting down of a great blue cotton ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... an avocation dropped into the easiest of the wicker chairs and felt in his pockets for ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... and sandy man, who spent most of his life driving over evil country roads in a buggy, securing orders for dairy furniture and certain allied lines of farm utensils. This practice had given him a loud voice and a deceptively hearty manner, to which the other avocation of cheese-buyer, which he pursued at the Board of Trade meetings every Monday afternoon, had added a considerable command of persuasive yet non-committal language. To look at him, still more to hear him, one would have sworn he was a good fellow, a trifle ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... care and well-being of the baby. In every city in the country this work is needed and is [56] waiting for the missionaries who will volunteer. To teach mothers the need for boiled water as a necessary drink for baby and older children is alone a worthy avocation. To impress upon one of these willing but ignorant mothers the absolute necessity for washing her hands before preparing baby's food, that she must keep a covered vessel in which the soiled napkins are placed until washed, that she ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... to men of other vocations adopting farming as an avocation if they can afford it. It is a rational form of pleasure for wealthy people, and one in which they can often be of great service. This cannot be said of all forms of relaxation. Wealthy men have been of special service to the cause of agriculture by promoting the breeding of improved ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... public meeting takes place: a meeting which bears a family resemblance to our own Public Dinner, in respect of its being a main part of the proceedings that every gentleman present is required to drink something nasty. These Mataboos are a privileged order, so important is their avocation, and they make the most of their high functions. A long way out of the Tonga Islands, indeed, rather near the British Islands, was there no calling in of the Mataboos the other day to settle an earth-convulsing ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... drink, which had been given them by some of the more respectable loyalists of the town. On the morrow, therefore, the rabble of the town again sounded the cry of "Church and King," and being joined by the rabble of the mining and foundery districts in the neighbourhood, they resumed their dreadful avocation. On that day the houses of Messrs. John Ryland, Taylor, and Hutton, were destroyed; the magistrates making no effectual preparations to stop the ravages. It does not appear that the mob had been furnished with any drink on this ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... excellent treatise the author endeavours to show, that the complaint of the shortness of life is not founded in truth: that it is men who make life short, either by passing it in indolence, or otherwise improperly. He inveighs against indolence, luxury, and every unprofitable avocation; observing, that the best use of time is to apply it to the study of wisdom, by which life may ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... was no one there who knew the "blind girl." All my mother's friends had vanished, and "they were all gone, the dear familiar faces." I fondly bade adieu to Jonesville with the consciousness of having performed a sad duty, and proceeded with my avocation, with my wonted success, until we reached Toledo, Ohio, where Miss Weaver was attacked with a serious illness which kept me in constant attendance upon her ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms |
