It gave rather gay, fleeting fantasies—a sense of delicate mental power as though thought were a sort of glittering toy, to amuse oneself with.

He poured the water away, and dropped the cup, saying to himself, "It is still cool, and I really feel no thirst, it is not well to amuse oneself with supernatural things."

This is not history; a list of battles and a string of intrigues are not history, they communicate no knowledge applicable to our present state; and it really is better to amuse oneself with an avowed romance, which latter is a great deal worse than passing one's time in counting the trees.

But books, facts, ideas—all the riddle of this various nature—that one might still amuse oneself with a little, till one's own light went out in the same darkness that had already engulfed mother—husband—child.

"Men to cross swords with, to amuse oneself with," I mused; "but dogs and horses to live with."