"Enthusiast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... good man; but he has not waked, And seen the Sphinx's stony eyes fixed on him. God veils it. He believes in Christ, he thinks; And so he does, as possible for him. How he will wonder when he looks for heaven! He thinks me an enthusiast, because I seek to know God, and to hear his voice Talk to my heart in silence; as of old The Hebrew king, when, still, upon his bed, He lay communing with his heart; and God With strength in his soul did strengthen ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... Institute in New York, in February, 1860, Lincoln had said: "John Brown's effort...in its philosophy corresponds with the many attempts related in history at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people, until he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt which ends in little else than in his own execution." A few months afterwards, the ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... "An enthusiast," said I, "as well as a philosopher!—perhaps (and I believed it likely), I have the honour of addressing a ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... perhaps, that a door had been opened for him. His inner self became visible, and that imposingly. The man was there; a firm man, indomitable, a thunderbolt of war, a close-mouthed, far-seeing, praying and worshipping, more or less ambitious, not always just, patriotically devoted fatalist and enthusiast, a mysterious and commanding genius of an iron sort. When he was angered it was as though the offender had managed to antagonize some natural law, or force or mass. Such an one had to face, not an irritated human organism, but a Gibraltar ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... worsted by the quick wit of this woman, who silenced all objections, and who, with no conception of the rooted enmity she was exciting, told with the utmost freedom, past and present speculations and experiences. The long fasts, and continuous religious exercises, worked upon her enthusiast's temper, and excited by every circumstance of time and place, it is small wonder that she supposed a direct revelation had come to her, the nature of which Winthrop mentions ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... called for during the last part of the climb seemed to have dispelled his fit of abstraction. Being an eminently adaptable man, he responded to her mood. "Ah, that sounds more like the enthusiast who set forth so gayly from the Kursaal this morning," he answered, pulling the door ajar before he took a seat by her side on the bench. "A few minutes ago you were ready to condemn me as several kinds of idiot for going on in the teeth of our ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... bolster with all my might. Such was the vivid impression of this dream, that I could not turn my thoughts away from it, and at last I considered that it was a divine interposition. All my scruples vanished, and before the day had dawned I determined that I would follow the advice of Timothy. An enthusiast is easily led to believe what he wishes, and he mistakes his own feelings for warnings; the dreams arising from his daily contemplations for the interference of Heaven. He thinks himself armed by supernatural assistance, and warranted by the Almighty ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... that young ladies were most fitly employed in household affairs, or in practising the accomplishments they might have learned with an occasional attendance at a ball or archery meeting, thought his fair companion an enthusiast, a perfect heroine of romance, though he did not tell her so. She possibly considered him somewhat dull and phlegmatic. Jack's notion of duty was to gain as much professional knowledge as possible; to obey the orders he might receive, and to carry them out ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... London—what knowing them always meant to him! They, perhaps, have forgotten him; but meeting the Webbs and Graham Wallas and that English group could be nothing but red-letter events to a young economic enthusiast one year out of college, studying Trade-Unionism in ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... to one of the current literary journals, probably The Literary Gazette, and by this means came into correspondence with Charles Wells himself. Rather later a relative of Wells's sought out the young enthusiast in London, intending to solicit his aid in an attempt to induce a publisher to undertake a reprint, but in any endeavours to this end he must have failed. For many years a copy of the poem, left by the author's request at Rossetti's lodgings, lay there ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... himself had yet delivered the Particular Baptists from the yoke of hyper-calvinism which had to that hour shut the heathen out of a dead Christendom, and the aged chairman shouted out the rebuke—"You are a miserable enthusiast for asking such a question. Certainly nothing can be done before another Pentecost, when an effusion of miraculous gifts, including the gift of tongues, will give effect to the commission of Christ as at first." Carey had never before mentioned the subject ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... is misleading. Accumulated evidence is convincing. The difference between the scientist and the enthusiast is that the former knows the difference between these two ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... is warm with tender love. He was an enthusiast in many directions. His heart went out to the French Talmudists, yet he cherished so genuine an affection for Maimonides that he defended him with spirit against his detractors. Gentle by nature, he broke forth into fiery indignation against the French critics of Maimonides. ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... a sentimentalist and an enthusiast; there was the extraordinary case shortly after I first met him of his championship of X, a man who had been caught in an especially bestial kind of crime and received a year's imprisonment for it. On X leaving prison Wilbraham championed and defended ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... experienced, not even on the ocean. She remained long in prayer, and when she lay down to sleep beside her matron-friend, no words were spoken between them. The elder, overcome with fatigue, soon sank into a peaceful slumber; but the young enthusiast lay long awake, listening to the lone voice of the whippoorwill complaining to the night. Yet, notwithstanding this prolonged wakefulness, she arose early and looked out upon the lovely landscape. The rising sun pointed to ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book, at once so simple and sublime, should be merely the work of man? Is it possible that the sacred personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere man? Do we find that He assumed the tone of an enthusiast or ambitious sectary? What sweetness, what purity in His manner! What an affecting gracefulness in His delivery! What sublimity in His maxims! what profound wisdom in His discourses? What presence of mind, what subtlety, what truth in His replies! How great the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... needed information as to exhausted soils. He recommended books for Fred to read, and what was more to the point sent a young man to plan his work and initiate him into the mysteries of tilling and fertilizing. The soil expert was an enthusiast, and he left behind him the nucleus of a club which he suggested that the young men of the neighborhood enlarge during the winter for the discussion of new methods ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... grand rebellion, when the estates of the prime nobility and gentry were sequestered, and there was no court for them to resort to, the then powers encouraging only the maddest enthusiast, or the basest of the people, whom they looked upon as the fittest instruments to support their tyranny; some ingenious gentlemen, who had applied themselves chiefly to their studies, and abhorred the usurpation, proposed the erecting a society for the improvement of natural ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... progress of these substantial and most effective mechanical drawings. Watson explained to me, in the most common-sense manner, his reasons for the various forms, arrangements, and proportions of the details of his designs. He was an enthusiast on the subject of Euclid; and to see the beautiful problems applied by him in working out his excellent drawings was to me ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... wrong in suppressing Thuggee in India? If not, would it be wrong in putting down any enthusiast who attempted to set up the worship of Astarte in the Haymarket? Has the State no right to put a stop to gross and open violations of common decency? And if the State has, as I believe it has, a perfect right to do all these things, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... grew the John Brown raid into Virginia in 1858. John Brown was an enthusiast, whom sufferings from the Border Ruffians in Kansas, where one of his sons had been atrociously murdered and another driven to insanity by cruel treatment as a prisoner, had frenzied in his opposition to slavery. He had dedicated himself ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... are not peculiar to the religious enthusiast. Silius Italicus performed annual ceremonies on the mountain of Posilippo; and it was there that Boccaccio, quasi da un divino estro inspirato, re-solved to dedicate ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... happily. "I'm glad now that I thought to pack my racket before I started. My, how I would like to be out there now." For Nan was a tennis enthusiast, and really could ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... Scottish constituency against the libel of gullibility. But Lewis was not listening. He did not think of the impression made on the voting powers, but on one small girl who clamorously impeded all his thoughts. She was, he knew, an enthusiast for the finer sentiments of life, and of these Mr. Stocks had long ago claimed a monopoly. He felt bitterly jealous-the jealousy of the innocent man to whom woman is an unaccountable creature, whose habits and likings ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... channels into song, And set them to thee—such a tribute, lady, As beauty rarely scorns, even from the meanest. The name—appended by the burning heart That long'd to show its idol what bright things It had created—yea, the enthusiast's name, That should have been thy triumph, was thy scorn; That very hour—when passion, turn'd to wrath, Resembled hatred most—when thy disdain Made my whole soul a chaos—in that hour The tempters, found me a revengeful tool ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... People smile at the "enthusiasm of youth"—that enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back at with a sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they ever lost it. . . . Do not fear being considered an enthusiast. What matter? But pray for tact, the true tact which love alone can give, to prevent scandalising ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... no reason against their being happy. Louisa had fine naval fervour to begin with, and they would soon grow more alike. He would gain cheerfulness, and she would learn to be an enthusiast for Scott and Lord Byron; nay, that was probably learnt already; of course they had fallen in love over poetry. The idea of Louisa Musgrove turned into a person of literary taste, and sentimental reflection was amusing, but she had no doubt ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... other pulling his shirt over his head. It was a strange crew that inhabited these quarters; there were idealists, dreamers, men out of work, simple rascals and adventurers of all kinds. To my right slept a big, young Westerner, from some totally unknown college in Idaho, who was a humanitarian enthusiast to the point of imbecility, and to the left a middle-aged rogue who indulged in secret debauches of alcohol and water he cajoled from the hospital orderlies. Yet this obscure and motley community was America's contribution to ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... direc'ly; make him a-stob you! Now I'm off! My friends of which I sbeak lif long way off; but I be back with them in two days, the time you start. Bromise to wait till then! All right! Ta-ta!" With a final casting-up of hands to heaven, the enthusiast was gone. ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... might aid the red men in retaining their rights, and the slave population in obtaining theirs. He was warm-hearted and generous, and from his manner, I had little doubt, as brave as steel. By many he would have been looked upon as a crazy enthusiast or a dangerous character, for whom the walls of a prison or a mad-house would prove the safest abode. He, however, had the discretion to follow the advice he had received, and did not again in public broach the subject of Indian ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... To add to her attractions by the slight supercheries of the toilet was, she thought, a very venial sin; it was a thing which, in the society that surrounded her, was looked upon as necessary, and sometimes even considered as a virtue. She was a strange girl, a dreamer, an enthusiast, with a warm heart, and a lively, but perhaps too easily-excited imagination. From her infancy, she had been accustomed to reflect, to question, and to reason; but left almost entirely to her own unguided judgment, the habit was not in every respect favourable to the formation of her character. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... a national memorial of Shakespeare in London has been revived in conditions not wholly unlike those that have gone before. Mr Richard Badger, a veteran enthusiast for Shakespeare, who was educated in the poet's native place, has offered the people of London the sum of L3500 as the nucleus of a great Shakespeare Memorial Fund. The Lord Mayor of London has presided over a ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... in Crater's history introduces Will G. Steel, widely known as "the Father of Crater Lake National Park," a pioneer of the highest type, a gold-seeker in the coast ranges and the Klondike, a school-teacher for many years, and a public-spirited enthusiast. In 1869, a farmer's boy in Kansas, he read a newspaper account of an Oregon lake with precipice sides five thousand feet deep. Moving to Oregon in 1871, he kept making inquiries for seven years before he verified ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... our house before he played in the presence of kings," said the burgomaster's wife. "At that time he was quite smitten with Charlotte. He was always of an aspiring turn. At that time he was saucy and an enthusiast. My husband laughed when he heard of the foolish affair, and now our Charlotte is ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... been tractable, and had agreed to postpone his exercises. He furthermore had accompanied the pensionary to the cathedral, in order to persuade Herman Modet that it would be better for him likewise to defer his intended ministrations. They had found that eloquent enthusiast already in the great church, burning with impatience to ascend upon the ruins, and quite unable to resist the temptation of setting a Flemish psalm and preaching a Flemish sermon within the walls which had for so many centuries been ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is, How could I, after being lost to you in this dear way, turn my face from you at the command of a religious enthusiast? A regard for father and not for his righteousness is the explanation; for I felt more nearly right following my heart to you. But now, dear knight, I am ready to forgive you the fault of assenting to such an unnatural sacrifice, ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... statement and amiability prepense. That, however, did not prevent Punch from chaffing "the Great George" upon occasion, as when he was preparing his "Life of Falstaff" the journal gravely assumed that he would reform that incorrigible tippler into a "teetotal Falstaff," and protested against the enthusiast mixing water so copiously with the milk of his human kindness. So Cruikshank set off in great wrath towards Fleet Street to seek out the scoffer, and, meeting Blanchard Jerrold, sputtered out his purpose and declared that he was on the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... spring a weary trail of tragic circumstances. Armand, who had a passion for music, would have worshipped at the shrine of Mlle. Lange's perfect voice until the curtain came down on the last act, had not his friend de Batz seen the keen enchantment which the actress had produced on the young enthusiast. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... a bit of a tennis enthusiast myself. Played on the team three years in college. Some before that. Tennis was about the only thing we specialised in when I was here. By the way, did you get into difficulties over the disciplining of that fellow, whatever ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... which forms two volumes of the "Eversley Library" (Macmillan). The "Tales" may be obtained in cheaper form in the Chaucer of the Aldine Poets (Bell), of which I have grateful memories, having first read "Chaucer" in these little volumes. The enthusiast will obtain the Complete Works of Chaucer edited for the Clarendon Press by Professor ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... an enthusiast by nature and temperament; all the sentiments which we have been describing he felt with more than ordinary intensity. It gave a grandeur to his hopes, and a distinct sense of ennobling pleasure to remember that he was treading ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... her atheistical," she insisted; "would I be influenced by such a person? She is an enthusiast, student of many religions, possibly; but people should know her before they judge, and you, Kenneth, should see her before you credit their gossip. She is a beautiful, sympathetic child, oppressed too early with the ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... was a steadfast enthusiast on religious matters, and, of course, attended almost every sort of church-meeting, especially revival meetings. They were occasionally held in summer, but mostly in winter when the sleighing was good and plenty of time available. One hot summer day father drove Nob to Portage ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... exclusively, and you have an athlete or a savage; the moral only, and you have an enthusiast or a maniac; the intellectual only, and you have a diseased oddity—it may be a monster. It is only by wisely training all three together that the complete ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... and the natural passions; and therefore I say that you don't believe the doctrine you preach. St Paul was an enthusiast. He believed so that his ambition and passions did not war against his creed. So does the Eastern fanatic who passes half his life erect upon a pillar. As for me, I will believe in no belief that does not make itself manifest ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... reclaim from the free city its wayward exiles. France, in her distress, has found an asylum here for its helpless nobles and expelled philosophers. I willingly take my hat off to brave little Switzerland, where Royal Duke, proscribed patriot, mad enthusiast, bold agnostic, and tired worldling can all find an inviolate asylum under the majestic shadows of its mountains—by the shores of its dreaming lakes!" Alan Hawke dropped suddenly from the clouds as the practical Miss Genie led ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... facts consistent with reason and experience, we see the one-sided bias of his mind—we see that he is not a judge but an advocate; and the faith which we should repose on the circumstantial narrative of a gentleman, becomes changed into the courtesy with which we listen to an honourable but deceived enthusiast. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... a pail and soap and water. It was very hard. She was not a Catholic novice; she was not penetrated with the great religious idea that, done in the service of the Master, all work is alike in dignity; she had, in fact, no religion whatever, and she was confronted with a trial severe even to an enthusiast received into a nunnery with all the pomp of a gorgeous ritual and sustained by the faith ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... His single concession to sea-faring attire was a yachting cap several sizes too small, perched on his spreading brown curls. His face was red; his eyes anxious, blue and bulging. He had the unwholesome, frenetic aspect of the patent medicine enthusiast, not uncommon in the North. Garth interrupted him in a grave discussion of the relative merits of "Pain Killer" and ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... merchandise, or to make themselves friends of those who have hitherto been held by the arm of power only. The grand shout of a multitude restored to freedom is undoubtedly very attractive, and enough to warm the heart of a benevolent enthusiast like Charles; but it is not advisable to set food in great quantities before a starving man, lest he eat himself into a surfeit. Ignorance is always in danger of using power very ill, since we see that even the enlightened are frequently prone to ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... an enthusiast over it, Mark, and I can fancy that if I were a big strong man, as you are, I might do the same; but if you are going now to try by yourself, why should you ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... confided to Maxwell one night when he had lingered for a chat with his benefactor. "It's great, suh. You should read it sometime, Mistah Maxwell; you would appreciate its wo'th." He outlined the plot then and there, and Maxwell good-naturedly listened, finding his compensation in the enthusiast's original comments on character and situation. This, however, established a bad precedent, and Maxwell was subsequently obliged to hear a careful synopsis of Little Dorrit, Old Curiosity Shop, and Oliver ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... development which has taken place here is, speaking relatively to the possibilities, only a beginning," Thode assured the heated enthusiast. "I'm down here to look after Mr. Larkin's interests, and those of the Mexamer Company with a view to extending their holdings if I can pick up anything promising. By the way, Mr. Hallock, that was a curious yarn you told Mr. Larkin, about some mysterious lost pool in a swamp with surface ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... ambitions, but also from personal resentments and personal vanity. What was remarkable was that this 'selflessness' had in it no element of 'quietism.' He retained all the keenness of desire for reform, all the zest of intellectual striving, and all the optimism, of the enthusiast." ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... friends about George's success (it is the young Herald) (208/3. His son George was Second Wrangler in 1868; as a boy he was an enthusiast in heraldry.) has been a wonderful pleasure to us. George has not slaved himself, which makes his success the more satisfactory. Farewell, my dear Huxley, and do not ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... recklessly indifferent. He could pile up fresh glories every minute by bowling the little pilgrim on his back and walking on his chest to lap his ear. This he proceeded to do, in his clumsy way of being friendly, with a regularity only possible to an enthusiast. And every time he did it anew, either Keno or Jim or a visitor would shy something at him and call him names. This, however, only served to incite him to livelier antics of licking everybody's face, wagging himself against the furniture, and dragging ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... of being nearer some perfect truth than a Gothic cathedral or an Etruscan villa. All around you, under the Concord sky, there still floats the influence of that human faith melody, transcendent and sentimental enough for the enthusiast or the cynic respectively, reflecting an innate hope—a common interest in common things and common men—a tune the Concord bards are ever playing, while they pound away at the immensities with a Beethovenlike ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... heavy and regular bearing. This is a large order to fill but it is a fair guess that somewhere there are wild trees better than any thus far brought to light. Trying to locate them should be an exciting assignment for a nut tree enthusiast. Do not think lightly of a butternut tree just because it looks small and unthrifty. It may be that the fault lies in an unfavorable location. Only an appraisal of the nut will establish ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... Charles himself and some of his counsellors may have suspected Jeanne of being a mere enthusiast, and it is certain that Dunois and others of the best generals took considerable latitude in obeying or deviating from the military orders that she gave. But over the mass of the people and the soldiery her influence was unbounded. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... this young enthusiast, "because they fling all rules aside, and cry out as they choose. It is their very heart's blood and the lusty wine of life that they give you, not just a scrap of 'rosemary for remembrance' and a soothing herb-tea ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... science—one which gave the highest promise of future distinction—but the suddenness of the stroke put to peril the just credit due him for discoveries he had already made. Dana had not only mastered all of the science of electro-magnetism then given to the world, a science in which he was an enthusiast, but, standing on the confines that separate the known from the unknown, was at the time of his decease preparing for new explorations and new discoveries. I could not mention his name in this connection without at least rendering this slight but inadequate homage to one of the most liberal ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... me," murmured our enthusiast, leaping from his bed at the first peep of dawn and arming himself from head to foot. Then treading softly, so as not to alarm the household, he went to the stable, saddled Rozinante, and leading him out through a back gate of the yard, mounted ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... old physicians and surgeons who have seen much service, and have been promoted to high professional place for their scientific attainments, this Cuticle was an enthusiast in his calling. In private, he had once been heard to say, confidentially, that he would rather cut off a man's arm than dismember the wing of the most delicate pheasant. In particular, the department of Morbid Anatomy was his peculiar love; and in his state-room below he had ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... who showed us through the church and the house under it made us wait half an hour while he finished his lunch, but he was worth waiting for. He was a charming enthusiast for both, radiantly yet reverently exulting in their respective treasures, and justly but not haughtily proud of the newly introduced electricity which lighted the darkness of the underground rooms and corridors. He told us he had been twenty years a missionary in Rumania, where he had ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... 'I believed all he said, because I found so much probability in it, and because the time when he told me his passion for Madam de Tournon commenced, is precisely the same with that when she appeared changed towards me; but the next morning I thought him a liar, or at least an enthusiast, and was upon the point of telling him so. Afterwards I came into an inclination of clearing up the matter, and proposed several questions, and laid my doubts before him, in a word, I proceeded so far to convince myself of my misfortune, that he asked me if I knew ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... doubt the allusion is to Antoinette Bourignon and her conventicles. Mlle. Bourignon (1616-1680), born in Lille, France, was a mystical enthusiast of tendencies not dissimilar from those of Labadie. Like him she wrote much, had temporarily a great vogue, and removed with her followers from place to place—Amsterdam, Schleswig, Holstein, Hamburg, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... There was evidently a good stiff epidemic of the yaws about; lots of cases of dum with the various symptoms; ulcers of course galore; a man with a bit of a broken spear head in an abscess in the thigh; one which I believe a professional enthusiast would call a "lovely case" of filaria, the entire white of one eye being full of the active little worms and a ridge of surplus population migrating across the bridge of the nose into the other eye, under ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... was always in the warmest nook by the fire; in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to the Laureate, and to hear his opinion of Racine's last tragedy, or of Bossu's treatise on epic poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch from his snuff-box was an honour sufficient to turn the head of a young enthusiast. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... in Mr. Robert, "that some golf enthusiast might have taken it into his head to practice a shot from somewhere ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... Occasionally an individual tries to use it sporadically—the poet who tries to secure undying fame by distributing free copies of his verses to the libraries, the manufacturer who gives us an advertisement of his product in the guise of a book, the enthusiast who runs over our shelf list to see whether the library is well stocked with works on his fad—socialism or Swedenborgianism, or the "new thought." But, so far, there has been no concerted, systematic effort on the part of classes or ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... Oh, no!" said he who seemed to be Markham, with the optimism of an enthusiast. "There's no trouble about it. We've got some shanties that we put up about the mouth of the hole in the ground we made in the autumn, and you can see the hole without digging at all. Or at least you could in the early part of January, when I was ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... her as God is above man. I am a believer in absolute equality. I am a believer in absolute liberty between man and wife. I believe in liberty, and I say, "Oh, liberty, float not forever in the far horizon—remain not forever in the dream of the enthusiast, the philanthropist and poet; but come and make thy home among the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... own legs, and not his grandfather's, he is known simply as "Othello." This is due to the fact that Major Kemp once likened him to the earnest young actor of tradition, who blacked himself all over to ensure proficiency in the playing of that part. For he is above all things an enthusiast in his profession. Last night he volunteered to go out and "listen" for a suspected mine some fifty yards from the German trenches. He set out as soon as darkness fell, taking with him a biscuit-tin full ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... discovered that the stranger, the English lady, Mary St. John, outlandish, almost heathenish as her lovely name sounded in its ears, had a power as altogether strange and new as her name. For she was not only an admirable performer on the pianoforte, but such a simple enthusiast in music, that the man must have had no music or little heart in him in whom her playing did not move all that there was ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... to Labrador, and came sweeping southward with the matchless speed of which our schooner was capable when she got a chance. It wellnigh tore Bradford's heart-strings to leave his icebergs once and for all behind; for a more fascinated human being I believe there never was than this true enthusiast while on that coast. He must paint the bergs with rare power, must get the very spirit and suggestion of them on canvas, or his soul will quit ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... their rush; yet he was still pursuing the tenor of his way. The interest of marriage was not, therefore, in his case a fresh burden on a soul already laden with a variety of side pursuits. He was neither socially nor philanthropically active; he was not a club man, nor an athletic enthusiast; he was on no committees; he voted on election days, but he did not take an active part in politics. For Selma's sake all this must be changed; and he was glad to acknowledge that he owed it to himself as well as to her to widen ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Professor James Freeman Dana, of Columbia College, delivered a series of lectures on the subject of electricity at the New York Athenaeum. Professor Dana was an enthusiast in the study of that science, which, at that time, was but in its infancy, and he foresaw great and beneficial results to mankind from this mysterious force when it should ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... had prospered in the new locality, for his beard hung down to his waist. He was a widower with six young children (he had left them in charge of a sister of his to come out there), and the passion of his life was pigeon-flying. He was an enthusiast and a connoisseur. He would rave about pigeons. After work hours he used sometimes to come over from his hut for a talk about his children and his pigeons; at work, when he had to crawl in the mud under the bottom of the steamboat, he would tie up that beard of his in a kind of white serviette ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... but, after all, we can't forget that we live in a country in the making, can we? In a way, it's a world in the making. There's everything to do—and I want to be doing some of it, Lois," he declared, with a little outburst. "I can't help it. I know some people think I'm an enthusiast, and others put me down as a ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... serpent like, all round the garden, which, situated at the head of the valley, is shut in by the hills—itself a wilderness of luxuriance and beauty. It was a glorious evening, and every thing in agreement with our quiet feeling. I am not an enthusiast, and to you I need not affect to be other than I am; but I have felt this day sensibly, and shall remember it for ever. Petrarch's fame is worth the noise and nothing of all the men-slayers since Cain! It is fame indeed, holy and lovely, when the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... town they returned thanks to God with clasped hands; for from Wittenberg, as heretofore from Jerusalem, proceeded the light of evangelical truth, to spread thence to the utmost parts of the earth."[37] Thither came young Patrick Hamilton from Edinburgh, whose "reek" was of so much potency, a boy-enthusiast of nature as illustrious as his birth; and thither came also from England, which is here our chief concern, William Tyndal, a man whose history is lost in his work and whose epitaph is the Reformation. Beginning life as a restless Oxford student, he moved thence to Cambridge, thence to Gloucestershire, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... much did he see of men, Their manners, their enjoyments and pursuits, Their passions and their feelings; chiefly those Essential and eternal in the heart, That, 'mid the simpler forms of rural life Exist more simple in their elements, And speak a plainer language. In the woods, A lone enthusiast, and among the fields, Itinerant in this labour, he had passed The better portion of his time; and there Spontaneously had his affections thriven Amid the bounties of the year, the peace And liberty of nature; there he kept In solitude and solitary ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... an opportunity there was for the naturalist, had a single enthusiast arisen? All lands, all climes, and all their natural productions were subservient to the will of the Emperor. The orb of the earth was searched for the roe of eels or the fins of mullets to gratify Caesar. And the whole world might have been explored, and specimens deposited ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... met the inventor," said the younger man; "but from what you have told me, I fear he is an enthusiast who will make difficulties. However, as you say, we must succeed ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... that recommended for rickets, although the evidence is that in Virginia the high cost of importing the rarer substances inclined local physicians toward the less elaborate compounds. Venice treacle, recommended by the Reverend Clayton's imaginary purge enthusiast consisted of vipers, white wine, opium, licorice, red roses, St. John's wort, and at ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... without replying, and left the room. The lovely enthusiast dropped her head on her hand, and remained silent, taking no notice of me, a cloud of sorrow ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... must fail. She is full of all kinds of chimerical expedients. Why, this very evening she was propounding the most preposterous scheme to me, as generous as it was nonsensical. No, no, my dear fellow, even to you I won't betray confidence. The girl is an enthusiast. Now enthusiasts are always morbid and unhappy unless they can find vent for their energies. Why don't you give her the natural and healthy vents supplied by wifehood and motherhood? Why do you wait for Hinton's first brief to make them happy? You have money enough to ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... is easy enough for any enthusiast to put such words as the following into the mouth of a man who has been reviled and attacked by thousands; but we hope, for the credit of the reading world, that such stories as the following, seldom find implicit credence. There may, however, be some foundation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... and too learned to be tolerant, and would not allow for men's weaknesses; he required an ideal government of perfect justice and perfect liberty. It was at this period that Antoine Macquart thought of setting him against the Rougons. He fancied that this young enthusiast would work terrible havoc if he were only exasperated to the proper pitch. This calculation was not altogether devoid ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Gymnosophists of India, he was come to Egypt to compare this mystic philosophy with that of the hermits of Ethiopia and the Thebaid. Addressing himself as a pupil to the priests, he willingly yielded his belief to their mystic claims; and, whether from being deceived or as a deceiver, whether as an enthusiast or as a cheat, he pretended to have learned all the supernatural knowledge which they pretended to teach. By the Egyptians he was looked upon as the favourite of Heaven; he claimed the power of working miracles by his magical ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... she told me, was due to the principles of Christian Science. On her father's side Mrs. Eddy came from Scotch and English ancestry, and Hannah More was a relative of her grandmother. Deacon Ambrose, her maternal grandfather, was known as a "godly man," and her mother was a religious enthusiast, a saintly and consecrated character. One of her brothers, Albert Baker, graduated at Dartmouth and ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... nearly as striking in outline as Orion, and its brightest star, the red Antares (alpha in map No. 12), carries concealed in its rays a green jewel which, to the eye of the enthusiast in telescopic recreation, appears more beautiful and inviting each time that he penetrates ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... suspicion that a quaint old high-frilled bleached and puckered Puritanical rectitude (her thoughts rose in pictures) possibly condemned the speculator as a description of gambler. An erratic severity in ethics is easily overlooked by the enthusiast for things old English. She was consciously ahead of them in the knowledge that her father had been, without the taint of gambling, a beneficent speculator. The Montgomery colony in South Africa, and his dealings with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... who greeted me on the streets and in the hotel lobbies with congratulations and efforts to say something agreeable and complimentary, I selected one compliment as unique. He was an enthusiast. "Chauncey Depew," he said, "I have for over twenty years wanted to shake hands with you. Your speech was a wonder. I was half a mile off, way up under the roof, and heard every word of it, and it was the only one I was able to hear. That you should do this in your eighty-seventh ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... Bordeaux, had entered the Jesuit order at an early age, and had become a priest. For fifteen years he had remained in the order, preaching, and also teaching rhetoric and philosophy, reputed "a prodigy of talent and piety," but also a mystic and enthusiast, with fancies that he must found a new religious sect. While preaching orthodox Catholicism in public, he had been indoctrinating disciples in private with his peculiarities; and, when they were numerous enough, he wanted to leave the Jesuits. ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... disposed to her! And she his wife! He pursued his researches in this sort at the cost of more stoups of wine than were needful or his rule. He grew enthusiastic over it, and laid up a fine store of penalties for future settlement. The enthusiast must neglect something; Prosper, being engrossed with his page and his wine, neglected the Countess. This lady, after tapping with her foot in her chamber till the sound maddened her, withdrew early. Immediately she had gone Prosper announced great fatigue. He sent for his page and a torch. Isoult ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... found his friend the publisher, in a dainty little place of business crammed with pottery, Rowlandsons, and books, and more like a curiosity-shop than a publishing-house, for the publisher proved an enthusiast in everything that was beautiful or curious, and had indeed taken to publishing from that rare motive in a publisher,—the love of books, rather than the love of money. He was aiming to make his little shop the rallying-point of all the young talent of the day, and as young talent has ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... roused his hottest indignation. He published a poem, as yet unrecovered, for his benefit; the proceeds of the sale amounting, it is said, to nearly one hundred pounds. (McCarthy, page 255.) The young enthusiast, who was attempting a philosophic study of the French Revolution, whose heart was glowing with universal philanthropy, and who burned to disseminate truth and happiness, judged that Ireland would be a fitting field for making a first experiment in practical politics. Armed with ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... the mountains. Mammon would never have taken his eyes off the pavement; mine soon left the contemplation of it, and fixed on St. Peter's thumb, enshrined with a degree of elegance, and adorned by some malapert enthusiast with several of the most delicate antique cameos I ever beheld; the subjects, Ledas and sleeping Venuses, are a little too pagan, one should think, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... activity of so many must almost oppress one not accustomed to it. The number of public-houses, theatres, and music-halls must give a young enthusiast for Christ a sickening impression. The enormous number of hawkers must also have given a rather exaggerated idea of the poverty and cupidity which nevertheless prevailed. The Churches in those days gave ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... eighty-third birthday, still retains that striking physique which singled him out as a probable "long liver" in the "fifties." He is tall, and his hair and beard are quite white—his spirits quick, undampable, and merry. That he is an enthusiast on many things is evident from the rapid way in which he discusses his pet subjects. Take Landseer, for instance. The great animal painter never produced a canvas of which Sir Robert could not tell you its story. On ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the social feeling of distrust of this unhappy young man allayed when the party learned, through a boarder of detective instincts, that Mr. Desole Arcubus was an enthusiast in scientific pursuits, and that the "romance of a poor young man," as shadowed out by him, was no romance at all, but an unpleasant reality. Toxicology was the branch of science to which Mr. Arcubus had for some time past been devoting his mind. For ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... knowledge, in the scientific conquest of the universe? Never in all history had there been such a commotion among the learned. Corbett and his gifted wife were early ranked among the eager, for he soon became as much of an enthusiast as she—in fact, since the baby, he is even more so—and derived much happiness from their mutual study and speculation. All theories were advanced from all countries, and suggestions, wise and otherwise, came ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... divided against itself: he was a moralist, emulating the "sage and serious Spenser" in his desire to exalt virtue and abase vice, he was a critic working out, with calm detachment, practical illustrations of the theories he had formulated, and he was a romantic enthusiast, imbued with a vague but genuine admiration for the wild superstitions of a bygone age. His stories exhibit painful evidence of the conflict which waged between the three sides of his nature. In the essay prefixed ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... understand that you have won a battle greater than all the triumphs of empires; you will keep alive in your soul true light and enduring beauty; you will hear the music eternally in the heart of the high enthusiast and have vision of ultimate victory that has sustained all the world over the efforts of centuries, that uplifts the individual, consolidates the nation, and leads a wandering race from the desert into ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... high-strung susceptibility to emotions, sentiments, and ideas; and he is tinged with a cynicism to which there is no closer parallel than in the maxims of La Rochefoucauld. The union of the philosopher, the enthusiast, and the man of the world is fairly unusual in literature, but in Hazlitt's case the union was not productive of any sharp contradictions. His common sense served as a ballast to his buoyant emotions; the natural strength ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... frankly an enthusiast of the things of art; and her meditations unfortunately betray the fact that Etruscan mirrors are as dear to her as the daisies, and that she cannot find it more virtuous to contemplate a few cows in a pasture than a group of Leonardo's people in their rock-bound cloisters. ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... may be a good man, a social enthusiast, an artist and connoisseur, not in spite of his money, but because of it; not by giving it away, pre- or post mortem; but by using ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... fairly glow with the inspiration of it; those of the later wanderings are mainly filled with brief, terse records, interspersed with satire and denunciation. In the 'Innocents' the writer is the enthusiast with a sense of humor. In the 'Tramp' he has still the sense of humor, but he has become a cynic; restrained, but a cynic none the less. In the 'Innocents' he laughs at delusions and fallacies—and enjoys ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... man with the eyes of an enthusiast and filthy locks. He was badly in need of a change of linen. And so I had every reason to ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... a Protestant, as all his family had been, by birth, but not by investigation, which he had never attempted, although at one period of his life he had been an enthusiast in its cause. He had never, so far as came to my knowledge, been ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... It was marvellous, incredible. She recalled confusedly something Hunsdon had said about his having a beautiful character—well, that was originally, not after years of degradation. Besides, Hunsdon was a fanatical enthusiast. ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... committed the error of dividing herself from him. The natural consequences of that self-sacrifice were springing up now like the little yellow flowers in the grasses of the lemon groves. With all her keen intelligence she made the mistake of the enthusiast, that of reading into those whom she loved her own shining qualities, of seeing her own sincerities, her own faithfulness, her own strength, her own utter loyalty looking out on her from them. She would probably have denied that this was so, ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of mine entertained a contrary view was evident from a letter I received a few weeks ago from an inexperienced boy enthusiast, who was a member of a newly formed nature-study class. Here is the exact wording of the communication: "Dear Sir: 10 A. M. Wind East. Cloudy. Small bird seen on ground in orchard. Please name. P. S. ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... showing in her eyes. Her daughter still looks up into them. It is not strange that the dwellers round about dispute as to which is the fairer, nor that in the six months during which the two have occupied Number 19 the neighbors have reached no conclusion on this subject. If some young enthusiast compares the daughter—in her eighteenth year—to a bursting blush rosebud full of promise, some older one immediately retorts that the other—in her thirty-fifth—is the red, red, full-blown, faultless joy of the garden. If one says the maiden has the dew of youth,—"But!" ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable |
