quotations about hobbies
The job of feet is walking, but their hobby is dancing.
AMIT KALANTRI
Wealth of Words
The fact that stamp collecting has long been the most popular hobby in the world, with over 16 million enthusiasts in the United States alone, is a good indication of how much fascination and appeal these colorful little pieces of gummed paper exert.
ROBERT OBOJSKI
A First Stamp Album for Beginners
There are people like Senhor José everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty beverage cans, little angels, cacti, opera programmes, lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, glass obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of something that we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers and with no divine help, they attempt to impose some order on the world, and for a short while they manage it, but only as long as they are there to defend their collection, because when the day comes when it must be dispersed, and that day always comes, either with their death or when the collector grows weary, everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
All the Names
A hobby is the result of a distorted view of things. It is putting a planet in the place of a sun.
JOHN LANCASTER SPALDING
Aphorisms and Reflections
Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you.
DALE CARNEGIE
attributed, Zany, Zeal, Zest and Zing: The Z Way to Happiness
I can elect something I love and absorb myself in it.
ANAÏS NIN
The Diary of Anaïs Nin
Hobbies are like sex, the amount of time spent thinking about the activity is probably a better measure of its importance than the amount of time spent doing it.
STEVEN M. GELBER
Hobbies: Leisure and the Culture of Work in America
It's time to move on. Time to take up another hobby, like crocheting, or serial killing.
DEREK LANDY
Death Bringer
That's why moderns have to have hobbies. They can't find satisfaction in their money-earning work, so many seek creative satisfaction in model planes and trains.
DOUGLAS WILSON
Angels in the Architecture
Hobbies are both a mystery and a delight. They're a mystery because many people with hobbies don't always share them with others. They're a delight because of the pure joy they provide to the hobbyist, making hours pass like minutes!
WILLET RYDER
Celebrating Diversity with Art
Hobbies are a homeopathic reaction to the job, that is, a dilute form of work that can cure the alienation caused by industrialism. As such, hobbies actively confirm the ideology of the work ethic by providing a productive way to use leisure, and they passively condemn the work environment by offering a contrast to meaningless jobs.
STEVEN M. GELBER
Hobbies: Leisure and the Culture of Work in America
What is a hobby anyway? Where is the line of demarcation between hobbies and ordinary normal pursuits? I have been unable to answer this question to my own satisfaction. At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant.
ALDO LEOPOLD
A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
Sometimes the hobby can become a full-time job. The accountant may discover that he can make enough money to support his family taking pictures; the schoolteacher may become enough of an expert on grave rubbings to go on the lecture circuit. And there are some professions which begin as hobbies and remain hobbies even after the practitioner is able to earn his living by pursuing his hobby; but because "hobby" is such a bumpy, common-sounding little word, we also have an unspoken agreement that we will call our professional hobbies "the arts."
STEPHEN KING
Night Shift
Never let your hobby ride you. Work while you work and play while you play.
CALIFORNIA STATE DENTAL ASSOCIATION
Journal, 1941
The only insult I've ever received in my adult life was when someone asked me, "Do you have a hobby?" A HOBBY?! DO I LOOK LIKE A F***ING DABBLER?!
JOHN WATERS
Role Models
No gear, no hobby.
ANONYMOUS
You know, I'm very embarrassed when people ask me what are my hobbies; I don't have any hobbies. I mean, it's just enough to keep up with the things I'm trying to solve.
IRWIN ROSE
interview, December 9, 2004
I wanted to develop some hobbies. So far, I hadn't really developed any, but I did have a growing collection of empty wine bottles. That could be a hobby. And I had bookmarked several articles on making your own soap. In case, you know, soap ever wasn't readily available.
N. M. SILBER
Power of Attorney
Hobbies are rather silly 'escape attempts' by people who believe themselves to be doing something serious and free but are in fact constrained by much larger structures (unemployment, suburban domesticity). The very framing of practices as hobbies is -- within critical thought -- a judgement on the inconsequentially routinized nature of everyday life.
DON SLATER
"The Ethics of Routine: Consciousness, Tedium and Value", Time, Consumption and Everyday Life: Practice, Materiality and Culture
You have to take an interest in something in life, I told myself. I wondered what could interest me, now that I was finished with love. I could take a course in wine tasting, maybe, or start collecting model aeroplanes.
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ
Soumission