Pastime Quotes

There is no room in baseball for discrimination. It is our national pastime and a game for all. ~ Lou Gehrig

When you doubt God's goodness, you hug sins tightly to your bosom, afraid that God will rob you of your crutch, your pastime, your pleasure. ~ Erwin W. Lutzer

...It would hardly be a waste of time if sometimes even the most advanced students in the cognitive sciences were to pay a visit to their ancestors. It is frequently claimed in American philosophy departments that, in order to be a philosopher, it is not necessary to revisit the history of philosophy. It is like the claim that one can become a painter without having ever seen a single work by Raphael, or a writer without having ever read the classics. Such things are theoretically possible; but the 'primitive' artist, condemned to an ignorance of the past, is always recognizable as such and rightly labeled as naïf. It is only when we consider past projects revealed as utopian or as failures that we are apprised of the dangers and possibilities for failure for our allegedly new projects. The study of the deeds of our ancestors is thus more than an atiquarian pastime, it is an immunological precaution. ~ Umberto Eco

Perhaps the chief cause which has retarded the progress of poetry in America, is the want of that exclusive cultivation, which so noble a branch of literature would seem to require. Few here think of relying upon the exertion of poetic talent for a livelihood, and of making literature the profession of life. The bar or the pulpit claims the greater part of the scholar's existence, and poetry is made its pastime. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hunger makes dinners, pastime suppers. ~ George Herbert

All over the world people are now sleeping in their beds, or perhaps they are engaged in some idiotic pastime; and one might easily believe that each in his own way is doing his best to deserve destruction. But that destruction will bring no freedom. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

As concerning football, I protest unto you that it may rather be called a friendly kind of fight than a play or recreation - a bloody and murdering practise than a fellowly sport or pastime. ~ Philip Stubbs

I don't believe in happiness anyway ... it's too much of an American pastime, this search for happiness. Just forget happiness and enjoy your misery. ~ Frank McCourt

If I were to name my favorite pastime, I'd have to say talking about myself. I love it and I think most other people do too. We need, people like us, more listeners and less talkers. ~ Hedy Lamarr

Boating is a wonderful and relaxing pastime, however it is not without its hazards. ~ Captain Hank Bracker

I don't believe in lecturing people. It's much more effective to present reading as a fun, rewarding pastime. ~ James Patterson

Walking is a pastime rather than an avocation. ~ Rebecca Solnit

So it is that supernatural horror is the product of a profoundly divided species of being. It is not the pastime of even our closest relations in the wholly natural world: we gained it, as part of our gloomy inheritance, when we became what we are. Once awareness of the human predicament was achieved, we immediately took off in two directions, splitting ourselves down the middle. One half became dedicated to apologetics, even celebration, of our new toy of consciousness. The other half condemned and occasionally launched direct assaults on this gift. ~ Thomas Ligotti

But very early they understood that playing was somewhat suspect, allowed through indulgence, a trivial pastime soon outgrown, and only about twice removed from sin. Pleasure was only once-removed. ~ Jetta Carleton

The chase is among the best of all national pastimes; it cultivates that vigorous manliness for the lack of which in a nation, as in an individual, the possession of no other qualities can possibly atone. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

We always think of a diet with a big groan. But I think diets are fun. I think it is an American pastime for a lot of women. ~ Mindy Kaling

My new favourite pastime is listening to Michael Brown read his poetry"
Sigourney Weaver ~ Michael Brown

Controversy and contention are weakening habits. If Satan can succeed in creating in us the pastime of arguing, quarreling, and contention, it is easier for him to bind us with heavier sins which can destroy our eternal lives. Anger is a poor substitute for self-mastery and compassionate service. ~ Marvin J. Ashton

From books all I seek is to give myself pleasure by an honourable pastime: or if I do study, I seek only that branch of learning which deals with knowing myself and which teaches me how to live and die well ... ~ Michel De Montaigne

Like Elizabeth, all her subjects were fond of the savage pastime of bear and bull baiting. It cannot be denied that this people had a taste for blood, took delight in brutal encounters, and drew the sword and swung the cudgel with great promptitude; nor were they fastidious in the matter of public executions. Kiechel says that when the criminal was driven in the cart under the gallows, and left hanging by the neck as the cart moved from under him, his friends and acquaintances pulled at his legs in order that he might be strangled the sooner. ~ William Shakespeare

In all our quest of greatness, like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care, we follow after bubbles, blown in the air. ~ John Webster

Another lesson to file away about Scotland: insulting other people in a childish manner was the national pastime. ~ Molly Ringle

I was born in a village in the northeast, and it wasn't until I was quite big that I saw my first train. I climbed up and down the station bridge, quite unaware that its function was to permit people to cross from one track to another. I was convinced that the bridge had been provided to lend an exotic touch and to make the station premises a place of pleasant diversity, like some foreign playground. I remained under this delusion for quite a long time, and it was for me a very refined amusement indeed to climb up and down the bridge. I thought that it was one of the most elegant services provided by the railways. When later I discovered that the bridge was nothing more than a utilitarian device, I lost all interest in it.
Again, when as a child I saw photographs of subway trains in picture books, it never occurred to me that they had been invented out of practical necessity; I could only suppose that riding underground instead of on the surface must be a novel and delightful pastime.
I have been sickly ever since I was a child and have frequently been confined to bed. How often as I lay there I used to think what uninspired decorations sheets and pillow cases make. It wasn't until I was about twenty that I realized that they actually served a practical purpose, and this revelation of human dullness stirred dark depression in me. ~ Osamu Dazai

The sportsman knows that a sport is a recreation, a game, an amusement and a pastime, but his eyes are fixed on a higher goal, on the most important thing in his life, which is his education or his vocation. ~ Avery Brundage

I have a lot of friends who have hula-hoops, it's like a mixture of dance and athletics and exercise, meditation. It's a healthy hobby I think. I can do a few tricks, I can hoop from my neck and shoulders, and I can do a few moves, a few tricks! I can walk through the hoop whilst it's spinning. I feel like there's definitely an interest in promoting the hula-hoop as an important pastime! ~ Sufjan Stevens

War is not a polite recreation, but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to realize this and not make a game of it ... as it stands now it's the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts. ~ Mary McCarthy

Game of deducing a person's character from that person's appearance is an old pastime with racists and with those who seek an advantage over the poor or the ugly, the disabled, or any underrepresented minority. ~ Charles Baxter

For what, after all, is the difference between a memory and a fantasy? Are not both a succession of imprecisely rendered images further obscured by imprecisely chosen words and animated only by the wistful effort of one's imagination? And who is to say that a vividly imagined moment of happiness is not, in the end, more enriching to the spirit than a hazy semi-recollection of some pallid pastime? ~ Olga Grushin

Everything in my life was merely prologue until now, merely delay, merely pastime, merely waste of time until I came to know you. ~ Andre Aciman

However we pass Time, he passes still,
Passing away whatever the pastime,
And, whether we use him well or ill,
Some day he gives us the slip for the last time. ~ Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl Of Lytton

I came up with the best pastime in the history of man. What you do is find an aerosol tin of spray adhesive, such as you would use to stick posters to a wall. You then lie in wait and when a wasp flies by, you leap out and give it a squirt. Bingo. One minute it's flying; the next it's tumbling silently out of the sky with a confused look on its stupid little face. ~ Jeremy Clarkson

True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself, hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person. ~ Albert Camus

Being used to something is such a poor excuse for prolonging anything, but it seems a national pastime, don't you think? We let ourselves get into the habit of the grind, we let the grind wear us down. ~ Amanda Lee Koe

And usually [the philosopher] philosophizes either in order to resign himself to life, or to seek some finality in it, or to distract himself and forget his griefs, or for pastime and amusement. ~ Miguel De Unamuno

I must court her now,' said the Prince. 'Leave us alone for a minute.' He rode the white expertly down the hill.
Buttercup had never seen such a giant beast. Or such a rider.
'I am your Prince and you will marry me,' Humperdinck said.
Buttercup whispered, 'I am your servant and I refuse.'
'I am your Prince and you cannot refuse.'
'I am your loyal servant and I just did.'
'Refusal means death.'
'Kill me then.'
'I am your Prince and I'm not that bad - how could you rather be dead than married to me?'
'Because,' Buttercup said, 'marriage involves love, and that is not a pastime at which I excel. I tried once, and it went badly, and I am sworn never to love another.'
'Love?' said Prince Humperdinck. 'Who mentioned love? Not me, I can tell you. Look: there must always be a male heir to the throne of Florin. That's me. Once my father dies, there won't be an heir, just a king. That's me again. When that happens, I'll marry and have children until there is a son. So you can either marry me and be the richest and most powerful woman in a thousand miles and give turkeys away at Christmas and provide me a son, or you can die in terrible pain in the very near future. Make up your own mind.'
'I'll never love you.'
'I wouldn't want it if I had it.'
'Then by all means let us marry. ~ William Goldman

I think it puts baseball back on the map as a sport. It's America's pastime and just look at everyone coming out to the ballpark. It has been an exciting year. ~ Mark McGwire

And perhaps it was precisely because she knew nothing at all about chess that chess for her was not simply a parlor game or a pleasant pastime, but a mysterious art equal to all the recognized arts. She had never been in close contact with such people - there was no one to compare him with except those inspired eccentrics, musicians and poets whose image one knows as clearly and as vaguely as that of a Roman Emperor, an inquisitor or a comedy miser. Her memory contained a modest dimly lit gallery with a sequence of all the people who had in any way caught her fancy. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

World-building is my favorite pastime, so with me, I'm always about reining myself in. I don't want to lose too much of the mystery by hammering every detail to death. I did fiddle with lots of maps for 'Glass Sword,' as the second installment sees Mare, Cal and company traveling throughout their country, and that's always fun for me. ~ Victoria Aveyard

For crying out loud, stop comparing and start living! And you'll be happier with your life, I guarantee. This is crucial: the most difficult thing in the world is to be who you are not. Pretending and trying to be someone else is the official pastime of the human race. And the easiest thing in the world is to be yourself. Be happy. Live! There must be a reason why God made you tall or short or fat or thin or bumpy all over. Love who you are! ~ Bo Sanchez

Reasoning is the pastime of my whole household, and all this reasoning has driven out Reason. ~ Moliere

To think of playing cricket for hard cash! Money and gentility would ruin any pastime under the sun. ~ Mary Russell Mitford

The majority of things in life are about picking your battles. You'll learn that too. And that will never be clearer than when you're at IKEA. You'd have to visit a Danish vacation village after two weeks of pouring rain and no beer to come across as many couples arguing as you'll hear in the IKEA section for changeable sofa covers on any given Tuesday. People take this whole interior design thing really seriously these days. It's become a national pastime to over interpret the symbolism of the fact that "he wants frosted glass, that just proves he never listens to my FEELINGS." "Ahhhhh! She wants beech veneer. Do you hear me? Beech veneer! Sometimes, it feels like I've woken up next to a stranger!" That's how it is, every single time you go there. And I'm not going to lecture you, but if there's just one thing I can get across then let it be this: no one has ever, in the history of the world, had an argument in IKEA that really is about IKEA. People can say whatever they life, but when a couple who has been married for ten years walks around the bookshelves section calling one another words normally only used by alcoholic crime fiction detectives, they might be arguing about a number of things, but trust me: cupboard doors is not one of them. Believe me. You're a Backman. Regardless of how many shortcomings the person you fall in love with might have, I can guarantee that you still come out on top of that bargain. So find someone who doesn't love you for the person you are, ~ Fredrik Backman

I write because I must. It's not a choice or a pastime, it's an unyeilding calling and my passion. ~ Elizabeth Reyes

Day by day, month by month, doubt by doubt, law and order became fascism; education, constraint; work, alienation; revolution, mere sport; leisure, a privilege of class; marijuana, a harmless weed; family, a stifling hothouse; affluence, oppression; success, a social disease; sex, an innocent pastime; youth, a permanent tribunal; maturity, the new senility; discipline, an attack on personality; Christianity... and the West... and white skin... ~ Jean Raspail

Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here. ~ Phyllis McGinley

He did not dissociate his thought from himself; he thought integrally, with the whole of his body; and each logical deduction forthwith became real to him - as happens only with very healthy or direct persons who have not yet turned thought into a pastime. ~ Leonid Andreyev

Are you for real?" She let out a short laugh, looking away. Why did so many good-looking guys have to be such douche canoes? "Man, you are something else."
"That I am."
"That wasn't a compliment."
"You sure about that?"
"Uh, yeah. I am."
"Hmm." He sounded utterly dismissive.
She had to force her hands to unclench. "I think you're the most uptight person I know."
"You know nothing about me."
"I know enough to know you need a hobby or a pastime. Maybe a different workout regimen to de-stress or you need to get laid. Something to loosen you up a bit."
His lips parted as he stared down at her. He looked affronted. Like if he had pearls, he'd be clutching them. "Did you seriously just tell me I needed to get laid?"
Rosie rolled her eyes. "Did you seriously just prove what I said?"
A moment passed. "Are you volunteering? ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

If you'd told me even a year before ... that I'd wind up whispering my sins in the confessional or on my knees saying the rosary, I would've laughed myself cockeyed. More likely pastime?Pole dancer. International spy. Drug mule. Assassin.
I drive under a sky black as graphite to meet my new spiritual director ... a bulky Franciscan nun named Sister Margaret, patiently going blind behind fish-tank glasses that magnify her eyes like goggles. ~ Mary Karr

Friends share thoughts, feelings stories, pastime and sometimes destiny. ~ Hussam Atef Elkhatib

Now we the American working population
Hate the fact that eight hours a day
Is wasted on chasing the dream of someone that isn't us.
And we may not hate our jobs,
But we hate jobs in general
That don't have to do with fighting our own causes.
We the American working population
Hate the nine-to-five, day-in day-out
When we'd rather be supporting ourselves
By being paid to perfect the pastimes
That we have harbored based solely on the fact
That it makes us smile if it sounds dope. ~ Aesop

What delight To back the flying steed, that challenges The wind for speed! - seems native more of air Than earth! - whose burden only lends him fire! - Whose soul, in his task, turns labour into sport; Who makes your pastime his! I sit him now! He takes away my breath! He makes me reel! I touch not earth - I see not - hear not. All Is ecstasy of motion! ~ James Sheridan Knowles

Belittling others is no pastime for those convinced of their own standing. There is terror behind haughtiness. It takes a punishing impression of our own inferiority to leave others feeling that they aren't good enough for us. ~ Alain De Botton

Stuffing birds or playing stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle, but it is not education. ~ John Henry Newman

Writing is a pastime, an obsession, something to do. Why make anything more of it? ~ Marty Rubin

Authorship is, according to the spirit in which it is pursued, an infamy, a pastime, a day-labor, a handicraft, an art, a science, a virtue. ~ August Wilhelm Von Schlegel

finding easy scapegoats for complicated problems had been a human pastime since the first mob of cavemen struck someone down with a rock. ~ Neal Shusterman

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another's thoughts. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man who always rides, at last forgets how to walk. This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

For my whole life, my favorite activity was reading. It's not the most social pastime. ~ Audrey Hepburn

Don't get involved with non-physical beings. This current pastime, this rage, is dangerous. Many of these people who are channeling entities are going to become very sick, physically and mentally ~ Frederick Lenz

In a nation committed to better living through chemistry - where Viagra-enabled men pursue silicone-contoured women - the national pastime has a problem of illicit chemical enhancement. Steroids threaten the health of the 5 percent to 7 percent of players proved, by a mild regime of scheduled tests, to be using them. Steroids also endanger emulative young people. Further, steroids subvert what baseball is selling - fair competition. And they strike at the pleasure of engagement with America's team sport with the longest history. ~ George Will

For years I played the what-if game. Maybe you're acquainted with this pastime. The rules are simple:

Rule #1: You're only allowed to think of worst-case scenarios.

Rule #2: You're never allowed to win this game. You can only lose.

Rule #3: The more you play, the greater your losses. ~ Craig Groeschel

He had sent her to the British school, which had a good standard of teaching. And at home, through his guidance, she had become as well-read as her brother. He liked to joke about this, tell her that her intellect shamed them all. But at some point, it seemed, he was content to let her grandmother and mother's plans for her take over. Sometimes she feels that she has become a half-developed thing, a sort of freak. Too educated to be content with the usual lot of her sex, but not enough to do anything with it. At her most angry she decided that her education had been a pastime for her father, an amusement. ~ Lucy Foley

There is a progression of understanding vis-a-vis pro football that varies drastically with the factor of distance
physical, emotional, intellectual and every other way. Which is exactly the way it should be, in the eyes of the amazingly small number of people who own and control the game, because it is this finely managed distance factor that accounts for the high-profit mystique that blew the sacred institution of baseball off its 'national pastime' pedestal in less than fifteen years. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I think the dual existence thing is a regular pastime for all human beings, and for that matter anything in this universe. ~ Joseph Gordon-Levitt

[I]f one is to learn from history, one should not concentrate solely upon a single portion of an era but rather make a thorough investigation of the many complex and mutually contradictory factors that made the era what it was. One must take the single portion and fit it into its proper place. One must evaluate the various elements that went into giving it its special character. Thus one must look at history from a perspective that offers a broad and balanced view.
This, I believe, is what is meant by learning from history. For any man's view of his own era is limited, and he has great difficulty in trying to obtain a comprehensive picture of his time. Precisely because of this, then, the comprehensive picture offered by history both provides information and constitutes a pattern for one's guidance. A man who lives bound by the limits of the minute-to-minute present is able, by means of the broad vision offered by time-transcending history, to avail himself of a comprehensive picture of his world and so correct his own narrow view of things. Such is the enjoyable privilege that history offers men.
Learning from history should never mean fastening upon a particular aspect of a particular era and using it as a model to reform a particular aspect of the present. To take out of the jigsaw puzzle of the past a piece with a set form and attempt to fit it into the present is not an enterprise that could have a happy outcome. To do so is to toy with history, a pastime fit ~ Yukio Mishima

I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised. ~ Wislawa Szymborska

It is the importance of this quality of generosity in fiction that requires a measure of childishness in the writer. People who have strong mental focus and a sense of purpose in their lives, people who have respect for all that grownups generally respect (earning a good living, the flag, the school system, those who are richer than oneself, those who are beloved and famous, such as movie stars), are unlikely ever to make it through the many revisions it takes to tell a story beautifully, without visible tricks, nor would they be able to tolerate the fame and fortune of those who tell stories stupidly, with hundreds of tricks, all of them old and boring to the discriminating mind. First, with his stubborn churlishness the good writer scoffs at what the grownups are praising, then, with his childish forgetfulness and indifference to what sensible people think, he goes back to his foolish pastime, the making of real art. ~ John Gardner

He applied himself to that pastime with great industry, ~ Joseph Conrad

Pastime passing excellent, if it he husbanded with modesty. ~ William Shakespeare

In this poor body, composed of one hundred bones and nine openings, is something called spirit, a flimsy curtain swept this way and that by the slightest breeze. It is spirit, such as it is, which led me to poetry, at first little more than a pastime, then the full business of my life. There have been times when my spirit, so dejected, almost gave up the quest, other times when it was proud, triumphant. So it has been from the very start, never finding peace with itself, always doubting the worth of what it makes. ~ Matsuo Basho

Philosophy should always know that indifference is a militant thing. It batters down the walls of cities and murders the women and children amid the flames and the purloining of altar vessels. When it goes away it leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery. ~ Stephen Crane

Society in its wisdom has found ways of constructing refuges of all kinds, for since it has been disposed to make the love-life a pastime, it has also felt obliged to trivialize it, to make it cheap, risk-free and secure, as public pleasures usually are. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I lived on the farm with my parents and grandparents. I had no playmates as a young child, and I was indulged. I helped my grandmother piece quilts, and we made pretty albums, an old-fashioned pastime. We cut poems and pictures out of magazines. ~ Bobbie Ann Mason

Complaining is the favorite pastime of millions. ~ Mason Cooley

My favorite pastime is to write. ~ Danny Bonaduce

The game of chess is the most fascinating and intellectual pastime which the wisdom of antiquity has bequeathed to us. ~ Howard Staunton

There's a world I could do without: public underwear showings. There was a time in my lifetime when you had to open a J.C. Penney catalog to see people in their underwear. Now it's like the national pastime, hanging out in your underwear. I don't see why they have to pay anyone to model it. ~ Kristin Billerbeck

Since violence is largely a male pastime, cultures that empower women tend to move away from the glorification of violence and are less likely to breed dangerous subcultures of rootless young men. ~ Steven Pinker

I cannot shun the past because it contains information that is useful to script future goals. Looking back into the opaque window of reductive retrospect, what essential opportunities exist today that beckon one to seek with unrestrained enthusiasm? What iridescent signals flare from our conceptual self that if we heedlessly ignore their luminous summons, such deliberate acts of omission will suture the apex of our souls, relegating us to the dreaded curse of mucking along in an ordinary life stalled out by our overweening fear of estrangement? ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author. ~ Arthur Miller

I tend to get comfortable with the dialogue and find out who the person is in the script and try to hit that. People are sort of independent of their occupations and their pastimes. You don't play a politician or a fireman or a cowboy - you just play a person. ~ Billy Campbell

Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading
once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive
is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good. ~ Alberto Manguel

Baseball is not a conventional industry. It belongs neither to the players nor management, but to all of us. It is our national pastime, our national symbol, and our national treasure. ~ John Thorn

My first and biggest love was always fiction writing. But it is a very lonely pastime. ~ Etgar Keret

As General Eisenhower discovered, it is easier to end the Cold War or stamp out poverty than to master this devilish pastime. ~ James Reston, Jr.

Merriment seemed to be a favorite pastime in this country, where the citizenry take the concept of happiness very seriously. ~ Eric Dinerstein

Being offended has replaced baseball as our greatest national pastime. ~ Kim Hunt Harris

I don't think I'd like to argue with you," I say. "I think it would be a very dissatisfying pastime. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

At certain periods it becomes the dearest ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a book; and he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world, and the pleasantest. But, if he only lives twenty-one days, he will find out that only those rare natures that are made up of pluck, endurance, devotion to duty for duty's sake, and invincible determination, may hope to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as the keeping of a journal and not sustain a shameful defeat. ~ Mark Twain

What earthly good is golf? Life is stern and life is earnest. We live in a practical age. All around us we see foreign competition making itself unpleasant. And we spend our time playing golf? What do we get out of it? Is golf any use? That's what I'm asking you. Can you name me a single case where devotion to this pestilential pastime has done a man any practical good? ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Praise and blame alike mean nothing. No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is the most futile of all occupations, and to submit to the decrees of the measurers the most servile of attitudes. ~ Virginia Woolf

Complaining about the weather seems to be a favorite American pastime. Sadly, we Christians often get caught up in this ungodly habit in our society. But when we complain about the weather, we are actually complaining against God who sent us our weather. We are, in fact, sinning against God. ~ Jerry Bridges

Honesty and wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person's expense! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

I did some thinking."
"That is a very dangerous pastime," Ghastek said. ~ Ilona Andrews

Football is an absolutely idiotic pastime by any rational standards. You're running into other people as hard as you can, you get frequent muscle strains and ligament tears, and the protective padding really doesn't do all that much to absorb the blunt trauma. ~ Chris Kluwe

He trotted down the hallway on all fours and started in on his second favorite pastime, conversations with plumbing. Just what I needed: Stone, the Toilet Whisperer. ~ Devon Monk

The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness; who read for pastime but not to kill time; who love books, but do not live by books. ~ Robertson Davies

Song of the Builders On a summer morning I sat down on a hillside to think about God - a worthy pastime. Near me, I saw a single cricket; it was moving the grains of the hillside this way and that way. How great was its energy, how humble its effort. Let us hope it will always be like this, each of us going on in our inexplicable ways building the universe. ~ Mary Oliver

I had discovered that love might be a pastime as well as a tragedy, and I gave myself to it with pagan innocence. ~ Isadora Duncan