Quotes About Enthusiasms

They walk the road of life, the road fenced in by their tastes, prejudices, disdains or enthusiasms, generally honest, invariably stupid, and are proud of never losing their way.

None has more frequent conversations with a disagreeable self than the man of pleasure; his enthusiasms are but few and transient; his appetites, like angry creditors, are continually making fruitless demands for what he is unable to pay; and the greater his former pleasures, the more strong his regret, the more impatient his expectations. A life of pleasure is, therefore, the most unpleasing life.

The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thing he can fall back upon another.

I have suffered from exuberance, from being scattered, a lack of focus, he says. Conflicting enthusiasms caused him to switch scientific fields several times, from high-energy astrophysics to space physics, to particles and fields, and finally to planetary science.

Nevertheless, I am greatly moved by my passions at times, and it has more than once been my fate to lose my sleep for the sake of a few pages written by some forgotten monk or printed by some humble apprentice of Peter Schoeffer. And if these fierce enthusiasms are slowly being quenched in me, it is only because I am being slowly quenched myself. Our passions are ourselves. My old books are me. I am just as old and thumbworn as they are.

General jackdaw culture, very little more than a collection of charming miscomprehensions, untargeted enthusiasms, and a general habit of skimming.

In polite society, we call our obsessions hobbies.

When you meet someone, ask about what hobby they have, not what they do. People always ask me about cooking, but I prefer to talk about tennis or boxing.

This book was written in service to my obsessions. But it is also a story about other people's obsessions

In polite society, we call our obsessions hobbies.

I have hobbies.

Warmed by their adoration, I feigned disinterest; it was what they expected, of course, and in keping with my public persona. Really, I adore the humans, for all their weaknesses. They have an immediacy, a vivacity lacking in eloim-kind; their brutish enthusiasms are endearing.

I think everybody has something that takes them away or makes them happier. To some people it's baseball or sports or knitting or the movies.

The constantness, varietylessness, the sheer weight of sameness drove him to despair and froze his imagination. To be required to sleep with the same woman forever was a curious and unnatural idea to him; to be expected to dredge up enthusiasms for old acts, and routine ploys; he wondered at the arrogance of the female.

Artificial passions" could be easily stoked, he wrote, raising the temperature. A self-absorbed president, catering to the "worst caprices" of his supporters, could easily distract their attention from plodding matters of governance, and whip their enthusiasms into a frenzy, especially if he divided his supporters and his critics into "hostile camps.

A self-absorbed president, catering to the "worst caprices" of his supporters, could easily distract their attention from plodding matters of governance, and whip their enthusiasms into a frenzy, especially if he divided his supporters and his critics into "hostile camps.

Eventually, Morrison realized that work was the only language the two men shared. When he wasn't talking about RIM, Lazaridis was rhapsodic about technology breakthroughs and quantum physics. Balsillie's enthusiasms were sports, traveling, and business celebrities who were starting to pay attention to BlackBerry's founders.

I didn't like England. I couldn't take the look of the place or the style of friendship. I need more intimacy from people than is considered okay there, and I felt that my personality and my enthusiasms weren't understood. I had to put a big lid on myself.

I realized I need to do a better job of opening up other interests because my interests are sports, my family, my faith and my friends. That's it. That's all I got.

Jessy should control the whole process, from the determination of the stressor and the identification of the problem behavior, to the choice of the reward, taken from her treasury of Enthusiasms.

For most of us, it is our fears and regrets which define the people we become; it is our fears which come back in the night, like ghosts, and which terrorise our lives. It is our regrets which interfere with our ambitions so that instead of looking forward we are forever peering over our shoulders at the past. Caleb and Bunty were so occupied with tomorrow that they never had time for yesterday. They had interests and enthusiasms galore.

He had revealed the morbid psychology of the mind which has attained the October of its sensations, recounted the symptoms of souls summoned by grief and licensed by spleen, and shown the increasing decay of impressions while the enthusiasms and beliefs of youth are enfeebled and the only thing remaining is the arid memories of miseries borne, intolerances endured and affronts suffered by intelligences oppressed by a ridiculous destiny.

Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.

I had a lot of enthusiasms that were very contradictory, I was never very doctrinaire in the type of design I wanted to do.