Dilettanteism

Dil`et`tan´te`ism

The state or quality of being a dilettante; the desultory pursuit of art, science, or literature.

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by G. & C. Merriam Co.

References in classic literature ?

Our sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place of dilettanteism and make us feel that the quality of our action is not a matter of indifference.

View in context

In his characteristically modest correspondence, he once referred forthrightly to his Agamemnon as "Dilettanteism" in a December 1875 note to Thomas Carlyle's niece, and Carlyle himself, having discovered his friend's authorship of the Rubaiyat, wrote to Charles Eliot Norton on April 18, 1873 of FitzGerald's "innocent far niente life" (Letters, 3: 630, 418).