"Enthusiast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... removing the deceptions and impositions of indirect payment of wages. He was a great advocate of allotments for working men, and set the first example to the wealthy and willing to provide the people with ground for healthy open-air recreation. As an agriculturist he was an enthusiast, and all who had tenancy of land under him found all well so long as they observed strictly the conditions of their tenancy, but woe to them and to all concerned if they infringed in the slightest degree the iron rule of discipline set down ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... quick cast of the hounds picked up the scent, and again they were off, but no longer with the fences to themselves; so that it was necessary to be watchful for the cheerful enthusiast who jumps on top of you, and the prudent sportsman who wobbles all over the field in his gallop, seeking for a gap. Killaloe drew away again: there was no hunter in the country side to touch him. After him went Brunette, with no notion ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... Collomsville, Lycoming County, have had arms loving pilgrims of note from all over the State to learn the last dying secrets of the Kentucky rifles, which, despite their name, were mostly made in Pennsylvania. Often the backwoods arms enthusiast would insist that the shutters be closed and the smith's work carried on by candle-light, lest a passing hechs cast a glance upon the barrel, which would ever afterward be deprived of the power to kill. The proud owner of a cherished gun ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... ourselves upon without vanity; but to disown our descent from them, talk big of our ancient families, and long originals, and stand at a distance from foreigners, like the enthusiast in religion, with a Stand off, I am more holy than thou: this is a thing so ridiculous, in a nation derived from foreigners, as we are, that I could not but attack them as I ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... hundred years ago, and so, report has it, did Nelson and Lady Hamilton; but these are small matters compared to the larger ones connected with Mr. Pickwick, and merit but passing record. Whilst those details concerning the fictitious character can be adjusted by any enthusiast who stays at the "Great White Horse" on a Pickwickian pilgrimage, no tangible trace that the three other historical personages used the inn remains to substantiate the fact, although ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... the steamer four feet, she can go through the sound, for I have taken a boat through that drew six feet. With your men to help me, I shall get the casks down by midnight, and then all we have to do is to go ahead," continued the enthusiast. ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... Mount of Jupiter, it denotes the blind enthusiast in affection, a man or woman who places his or her ideal of love so high that neither fault nor failing is seen in the being worshipped. With these people their pride in the object of their affection is beyond all reason, and all such extremists as a rule suffer terribly ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... seventy-eight not out was for many a day the sole topic of conversation over the evening pewter at the 'Little Bindlebury Arms'. A non-enthusiast, who tried on one occasion to introduce the topic of Farmer Giles's grey pig, found himself the most unpopular ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... little thing in itself; it was not for her beauty, for that was no more than a reminiscence, if it was not always an illusion; was it because she rendered the spirit of M. Offenbach's operas so perfectly, that we liked her so much? "Ah, that movement!" cried an enthusiast, "that swing, that—that—wriggle!" She was undoubtedly a great actress, full of subtle surprises, and with an audacious appearance of unconsciousness in those exigencies where consciousness would summon the police—or should; she was so near, yet so far from, the worst that could be intended; ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Let no sanguine enthusiast for the laws of property imagine, however, that this great man's career is now ended, and that R. N. F. will no more go forth as of old to plunder and to rob. Imprisonment for debt is a grievous violation of personal liberty certainly, but it is finite; and some fine morning, when the lark is carolling ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... boundless passion. It is not my fault, Princess, that God has sent this great happiness to me.... My life for the last eight years has been bound up in one thought,—you. Believe what I say, believe me because I am going to die.... I am neither a sick man nor an enthusiast.... I consider my love for you as the greatest happiness that God could have given me.... This happiness I have enjoyed for eight years. May God give you happiness, and ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... to a village, from the hands of the infuriated peasantry. But a traitor guided the enemy to the rear of the brave band of patriots; Peter Thalguter fell, and Hofer took refuge amid the highest Alps.—Kolb, who was by some supposed to be an English agent, but who was simply an enthusiast, again summoned the peasantry around Brixen to arms. The peasantry still retained such a degree of courage, as to set up an enormous barn-door as a target for the French artillery, and at every shot up jumped a ludicrous figure. Resistance had, however, ceased to be general; the ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... and the arrest of our players at the suit not of a Puritan but a publican, and the throwing of currant cake with intent to injure, I received very great personal kindness, a story of his childhood told by my host gave me a fable on which to hang my musings; and the Dublin enthusiast and the American enthusiast who interchanged so many compliments and made so brave a show to one another, became Dermot and Timothy, "two harmless drifty lads," the Bogie Men of my little play. They were to have ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... "Enthusiast," said the king, giving his hand to Le Catt with a kindly smile, "is the world so corrupt that so natural an act should excite surprise, and appear great and exalted? Are you astonished at that which is simply human? But look! There is a courier! He stops before the door of my peasant-palace. ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... time that he had written his most tender pieces, above all "Savonarole," the most passionate of his creations, with a grand duet, interwoven with rays of moonshine, the perfume of roses and the warbling of nightingales. An enthusiast sat down and played it on the piano, amid a silence of attentive emotion. At the last note of the magnificent piece, the lady burst into tears. "I can not help it," she said, "I have never been able ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... contrivances for giving him the lead; she exercised a kind of surveillance over the topics introduced; or in conversation with him she would play that most seductive part of the cynic shamed out of cynicism by the neighbourhood of the enthusiast. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in the society of ministers—men whom she soon learned to esteem more for what they knew than for what they preached. Theology, indeed, was the atmosphere in which she lived and moved and had her being. Intellectually, she was an enthusiast, morally an agitator, a clever leader, whom Winthrop very aptly described as a "woman of ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... paragrapher of the daily journal. The news of its failures is spread broadcast in bold head-lines by the sensational press. The fact that other kinds of treatment denominated "regular" also fail, seems never to be thought of. The mental healer, regardless of his success, is looked upon as an enthusiast, or worse, and even the citizen who modestly accepts the theory of possible mind-healing, is regarded as credulous and visionary by those who pride themselves upon their practicality. Why does this prejudice exist, when advancement in physical science uniformly meets with ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... travelers the last straw. In America where there are "diners" on every Pullman train, the food odors are seldom encountered in parlor cars, but in Europe where railroad carriages are small, one fruit enthusiast can make his traveling companions more utterly wretched than perhaps he can imagine. The cigar which is smoldering has, on most women, the same effect. Certain perfumes that are particularly heavy, make others ill. To at least half of an average trainful of people, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... with high clasped hand before the chief attraction in that room of treasures. "There," he murmured, "is the Venus de Medicis, and here I must stay—for ever and for ever." He had scarcely uttered these words, each more deeply and solemnly than the preceding, when an acquaintance entered, and the enthusiast, making a hasty inquiry if Lady So-and-So had arrived, left the room not to return again that morning. Before the same statue another distinguished countryman used to pass an hour daily. His acquaintance respected his raptures and kept aloof; but a young lady, whose attention was attracted by sounds ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Nani again hastily replied, as if he feared that the others might be too brusque with the young enthusiast. "The Holy Father has such a lofty mind. And of course it would be necessary to see him. Only, my dear child, you must not excite yourself so much; reflect a little; take your time." And, turning to Benedetta, he added, "Of course his Eminence has not seen Abbe Froment yet. It would be well, however, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... abandon all their strongholds." He is "much liked, notwithstanding many peculiarities. He is very liberal towards all doctrines and opinions, and cannot be put out of temper. These circumstances give him the advantage of his opponents, who are always bigoted and often irascible. Coleridge is an enthusiast on many subjects, and must therefore appear to many to possess faults, and no doubt he has faults, but he has a good heart and a large mass of information with," as his fellow-student condescendingly admits, "superior ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... this power very soon became to her an overwhelming interest. Playing with Mary Kitson's mind was as absorbing to Sarah, as chess to an older enthusiast; her discoveries promised her a life full of entertainment, if, with her fellow-mortals, she was able, so easily, "to do things," what a time she would always have. She discovered, very soon, that Mary Kitson was, by nature, truthful and obedient, that she had a great ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... chucked and caught it slightingly in the air, and handed it back. "Porphyry, I see." That was his only word about it. He said it cheerily. He left no room for discussion. You could not damn a thing worse. "Ever been in Santa Rita?" pursued Scipio, while the enthusiast slowly pushed his rock back into his pocket. "That's down in New Mexico. Ever been to Globe, Arizona?" And Scipio talked away about the mines he had known. There was no getting at Shorty any more that evening. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... February 7, 1811, and August 7, 1812) for plain speech about Lord Castlereagh, 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 ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... sciences. Professor Dewey was distinguished by his lectures and experiments in natural philosophy and chemistry. Professor Eaton early gave lectures in mineralogy, geology, and botany. He was a pioneer in these departments of science, and an enthusiast whose spirit easily kindled a like spirit in others. To pursue his favorite studies he had forsaken the profession of law. It was his custom to take his classes into the fields and woods and there interrogate Nature. Emmons, the younger Hopkins, Tenney, and Chadbourne ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... toil he had undergone during the seven years' residence among the people of Mayou, his eye was still full of the fire of that noble missionary spirit which animated the souls of such earnest men as Moffat and Livingstone, and Williams of Erromanga, and Gordon of Khartoum. For he was an enthusiast, who believed in his work; and so did his wife, a pretty, faded little woman of thirty, with a great yearning to save souls, though at times she longed to return to the comforts and good dinners of semi-civilisation in other ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... of distrust of this unhappy young man allayed when the party learned, through a boarder of detective instincts, that Mr. Dsol 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 fourteen hours a day ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... person capable of appreciating {hack value}. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in 'a UNIX hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... preacher, had 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 vocal only ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... infidelity. "Conform! Conform!" said in effect the most authoritative writers of the century. "Be sensible: go to church: pay your rates: don't be a vulgar deist—a fellow like Toland who is poor and has no social position. But, on the other hand, you need not be a fanatic or superstitious, or an enthusiast. Above all, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... "Bravo, my new pupil! Very adroitly argued. But suppose now that one of your dull diners happened to be an enthusiast about Greece, and that its glories were the only subject on which he was prepared to talk! Suppose he spoke of the 'Caryatids,' for example, and you had no idea what the word meant—how would you keep up your share ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... not satisfied with this explanation, she did not deem the point of sufficient importance to be pressed. Simply bending her body, in a gentle admission of the truth of what she heard, she sat patiently awaiting the further arguments of the pale-face enthusiast. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... the Sussex enthusiast, refusing an invitation to spend a summer abroad, express the feeling of many of ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... lessons in Esperanto, and had never studied the language, his sole knowledge of it being derived from general conversation with an enthusiast, who had just returned from the Geneva Congress. He was disposed to laugh at Esperanto, but was persuaded to test its possibilities as a language that can be written intelligibly by an educated person merely from dictionary ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... shall take care not to attempt to describe any thing; for either my description would not express the thousandth part of what ought to be said, or, if I drew a faint sketch, I should be taken for an enthusiast, or, perhaps, for a madman. It will suffice to add, that no people, either ancient or modern, ever conceived the art of architecture on so sublime and so grand a scale as the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Dr. Hosack, of New York City, who attended Alexander Hamilton after he received his fatal wound from Burr, was an enthusiast on the subject of fruits. It was his custom to terminate his spring course of lectures with a strawberry festival. "I must let the class see," he said, "that we are practical as well as theoretical. Linnaeus cured his gout and protracted his life ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... feel like dressing for St. Mark's, but about six months ago, I think it was, I undertook to convert him to my way of thinking, and to make him see how vain and wicked these Romish practices were, when he astonished me by his earnest defence of them, and ever since he is a perfect enthusiast; wouldn't stay from Mass if the house was on fire, and if you would believe it, is actually insisting that the children shall go with him whenever they don't go with me; next thing will be to take them with him anyhow, and the idea of having Johnny and Flora brought ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... so much of an enthusiast, that it is very unpleasant to stand near him when he is talking about his bugs, or exhibiting his specimens, on account of being spattered all over with the spray of his eloquence. A bat shot down in the dusk of the evening is enough to set him ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... can't possibly be a mistake, because it was Skinner who let her in when she called on Mrs. Crocker. Uncle Peter told me about it. He had a talk with the man in the hall and found that he was a baseball enthusiast—" ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... there are two sides to a question. History is one long illustration. The forces of nature are engaged, day by day, in cudgelling it into our backward intelligences. We never pause for a moment's consideration but we admit it as an axiom. An enthusiast sways humanity exactly by disregarding this great truth, and dinning it into our ears that this or that question has only one possible solution; and your enthusiast is a fine florid fellow, dominates things for a while and shakes the world out of a doze; but when ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one opera-box after another; but when fully comprehended, these special phrases are replete with emotion and insight. Several motives are so dexterously woven into one gush of melody that they cannot be disentangled by any ordinary method, and have to be wrenched apart by the enthusiast, who employs, when milder means fail, a sort of intellectual dynamite to extricate the meaning from the score. With the aid of this lecture, which is better than an ear-trumpet and a magnifying-glass, we can, however, trace a "SchwertMotiv" (Sword ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... held back, not by the fear of God, but by the thought that discovery is almost certain, and that the wrath of our Superior is withheld by no scruple of human kindness.... But remember, I knew nothing of this before I took my vows. To me it was a glorious career. I became an enthusiast. At last the time came when I was eligible; I offered myself to the Society, and was accepted. Then followed a period of hard work; I learned Spanish and Italian, giving myself body and soul to the work. Even the spies set to watch me day and night, waking and sleeping, feeding and fasting, could ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... their flock daily with prayers and tears," some among them, also, men of high European repute. They had often, however, the mortification of seeing their congregations crowding to hear the ravings of any knave or enthusiast who broached a new doctrine. Most of these mischievous fanatics were given the advantage of that interest and sympathy which a cruel and unnecessary persecution invariably excites. All this time freedom of individual judgment was the watch-word ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... least one of the qualities that attend that vocation, either a dupe or a cheat; I think," he continues, "the former, though, as most of his projects ended in air, the sufferers believed the latter. As he was much an enthusiast, perhaps like most enthusiasts he was ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... Martin's Hundred, to each of which two or three hundred settlers were sent prior to 1620,[4] and Berkeley Hundred whose records alone are available. The grant for this last was issued in February, 1619, to a missionary enthusiast, George Thorpe, and his partners, whose collective holdings of London Company stock amounted to thirty-five shares. To them was given and promised land in proportion to stock and settlers, together with a bonus of 1500 acres in view of their project for converting the Indians. ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... it is!" cried the young enthusiast, gazing rapt upon the complacent marble whisker so delightfully curled and bristling ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... as he died in 1829, at the age of eighty-three, from the effects of an operation; and Madame de Balzac and her family were left to face the stern facts of life, denuded of the rose-coloured haze in which they had been clothed by the kindly old enthusiast. Balzac's mother certainly had a hard life, and from what we hear of her nervous, excitable nature—inherited apparently from her mother, Madame Sallambier—we can hardly be astonished when Balzac writes to Madame Hanska, in 1835, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... of too joyful, light and hoping a nature to go to the depths of that feeling, much more to dwell perennially in it. He had no fear in his composition; terror and awe did not blend with his respect of anything. In no scene or epoch could he have been a Church Saint, a fanatic enthusiast, or have worn out his life in passive martyrdom, sitting patient in his grim coal-mine, looking at the "three ells" of Heaven high overhead there. In sorrow he would not dwell; all sorrow he swiftly ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... indeed, probable that 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. While ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... here, she would be perfectly triumphant to hear you speak so, Doctor." She turned to the hostess, and continued: "Jane is quite an enthusiast, you know; a sort of Dorcas, as husband says, modified and readapted. Yes, she ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... deformity; no feeling or affection to which his genius has not given the stamp of immortality: and does he want an interpreter? It is treading on dangerous ground to attempt to improve him. Even MR. KNIGHT, enthusiast as he is in his veneration for Shakspeare, and who, by his noble editions of the poet's works, has won the admiration and secured the gratitude of every lover of the poet, has gone too far in his emendations when he changes a line in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition, or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day dream often ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of twenty-nine years, Louis VI., called the Fat, son of Philip I., did not trouble himself about the East or the crusades, at that time in all their fame and renown. Being rather a man of sense than an enthusiast in the cause either of piety or glory, he gave all his attention to the establishment of some order, justice, and royal authority in his as yet far from extensive kingdom. A tragic incident, however, gave the crusade ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... may find it a very welcome addition to his income, regards Club practice as semi-charitable, and, moreover, a form of charity in which he is often imposed on; he seldom views his club patients with much satisfaction, and unless he is a self-sacrificing enthusiast, it is not to them that his best attention, his best time, his most expensive drugs, are devoted. To perpetuate and enlarge the club system of practice and to glorify it by affixing to it a national seal of approval, ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... find the steady, plodding labourer of a lifetime contrasted with the warm enthusiast, whose lot seems rather to awaken others than to achieve victories in his own person. St. Stephen falls beneath the stones, but his glowing discourse is traced through many a deep argument of St. Paul. St. James drains the cup in early manhood, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... West. Austin waited patiently. Lady Judith's old lord played on all the baths in Nassau without evoking the tune of health. Whithersoever he listed she changed her abode. So admirable a wife was to be pardoned for espousing an old man. She was an enthusiast even in her connubial duties. She had the brows of an enthusiast. With occasion she might have been a Charlotte Corday. So let her also be shielded from the ban of ridicule. Nonsense of enthusiasts is very different from nonsense of ninnies. She was truly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Benjamin Constant was subjugated: he arrived at the Tuileries with repugnance, he quitted the palace an enthusiast. ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... art enthusiast, gaining her living by copying old masters. Is at museum six days in the week. It was behind her easel Travis found a ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... school. He became an engineer, and having received an appointment in connection with the Suez Canal, went to Egypt. Subsequently he went to Syria, where he remained some years, laying out a carriage road from Beyrout to Damascus. He was an enthusiast, and his portfolio was full of schemes of far-reaching magnitude. Having met Saccard in Paris, he joined with him in the formation of the Universal Bank, which was intended to furnish the means of carrying out some at least of his schemes. Against his wish, Hamelin was made chairman ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... in pagan ideas. Chigi lent him his favourite manuscript, the Myth of Psyche, translated from Apuleius, which he declared Raphael must one day paint for him. But of all the gods of antiquity the one which roused our young enthusiast to deepest admiration was Apollo, whose avatar was the sun, but whose spiritual significance was infinitely more, the light of the soul, the god of music, art, and poetry and all that elevates ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... wood-carving is an art which makes no immediate calls upon that mysterious combination of extraordinary gifts labeled "genius," but is rather one which demands tribute from the bright and happy inspirations of a normally healthy mind. There is, in this direction, quite a life's work for any enthusiast who aims at finding the bearings of his own small but precious gift, and in making it intelligible to others; while, at the same time, keeping himself free from the many confusions and affectations which ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... thou, the habitant of some bright star, where frailty such as ours is yet unknown, lend to lovers a rapture unalloyed by passion's grosser sense; as, symphonious with the tremulous zephyr, chastened vows of constancy are there exchanged? Ah! vainly does one solitary enthusiast, in his balmy youth, for a moment conceive he really grasps thee! 'tis but a fleeting phantasy, doomed to fade at the first sneer of derision—and for ever vanish, as a false and fascinating world stamps its dogmas on his heart! ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... to find a similar instance of perfect and absolute disinterestedness in the roll of minstrels, from Homer downwards; and, to tell the truth, there does seem a spice of Quixotism mingled with and tinging the pure fervour of the enthusiast. Certain it is, that the Troubadours of yore, upon whose model Jasmin professes to found his poetry, were by no means so scrupulous. 'Largesse' was a very prominent word in their vocabulary; and it really seems difficult to assign any satisfactory ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... these newcomers, and one enthusiast grabbed up the jug and ran to meet them. Each of the three drank deeply and were rewarded with more cheers. If they were murderous in their hatred they would be stout defenders. As for their attitude toward all Indians, there were but few along the border who did not ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... next week. Since Catharine had been at the Limes she had read some of it, incited by Mr. Cardew, for he was an enthusiast for Milton. Mrs. Cardew was a bad reader; she had no emphasis, no light and shade, and she missed altogether the rhythm of the verse. To Catharine, on the other hand, knowing nothing of metre, the proper cadence came easily. They finished the first six hundred ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... room yesterday, and stayed while he was dictating to the little model. I do think grandfather's so splendid. Martin says an enthusiast is worse than useless; people, he says, can't afford to dabble in ideas or dreams. He calls grandfather's idea paleolithic. I hate him to be laughed at. Martin's so cocksure. I don't think he'd find many men of eighty who'd bathe in the Serpentine all the year round, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that an enthusiast might start semaphoring unexpectedly in a confined space and get his neighbour in the eye, I may say that I have thought of it," I answered. "But it isn't worth worrying very much about. He wouldn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... roadside, with a modest knapsack lying at their feet. His white calves twinkled sturdily, the uncouth Swiss guide with a surly mouth stalked like an unwilling bear at his elbow; a small train of three mules followed in single file the lead of this inspiring enthusiast. Two ladies rode past, one behind the other, but from the way they sat I saw only their calm, uniform backs, and the long ends of blue veils hanging behind far down over their identical hat-brims. His two ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... these dumb gestures first the exchange began Of viewless thought in bird, and beast, and man; And still the stage by mimic art displays Historic pantomime in modern days; 360 And hence the enthusiast orator affords Force to ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... had 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 ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... little enthusiast, I may never be asked to make any such sacrifice. I have not much chance of suitors at Mauleverer, as you know—and ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Beauvais. He would far rather have been in Paris. The romantic element in this unexpected adventure did not greatly appeal to him. He had crossed the ocean to help an oppressed people; he was full of enthusiasm for a cause, so much an enthusiast that the two braggart representatives of the people with whom he had come in contact at Tremont had in no way disillusioned him. Refuse must needs be cast on the wave crests of a revolution; but there was also Lafayette. He was the people's true representative, and Barrington longed to be at his ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... class consider Revelation a superstition, and Jesus either an enthusiast or a deceiver. To this class belong Wuensch and Paalzow, but no divine. The second class do not allow that there was any divine operation in Christianity in any way, and refer the origin of Christianity to mere natural causes. They make the life of Christ a mere romance, and ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... game of golf, my part of it, the least said the better. Doctor Bayliss, who, it developed, was an enthusiast at the game, was kind enough to tell me I had a "topping" drive. I thanked him, but there was altogether too much "topping" connected with my play that forenoon to make my thanks enthusiastic. I determined to practice ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... inaugurated in 1913 did not deal with the question of taxation only, and for my part, although I am an enthusiast on this branch of the subject, I have never thought that other aspects should be neglected. We put forward proposals for dealing with leases both in town and country. The present Government has carried and repealed again ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... of variation of the brightness. Any person with a good eye and skill in making estimates can make the observations if he will devote sufficient pains to training himself; but they require a degree of care and assiduity which is not to be expected of any one but an enthusiast on the subject. One of the most successful observers of the present time is Mr. W. A. Roberts, a resident of South Africa, whom the Boer war did not prevent from keeping up a watch of the southern sky, which has resulted in greatly increasing our knowledge of ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... The enthusiast would reply that by Liberty he meant the Law of Liberty. Then why use the single and misunderstood word? If by liberty you mean chastisement of the passions, discipline of the intellect, subjection of the will; if you ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... an enthusiast: all great men are. He had risen from the ranks by the absolute force of his great untiring, restless and loving spirit. From a day laborer in a cotton-mill he had become principal owner of a plant that supported ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... earth, seeking whom it may devour; it is the spirit of false philanthropy. When this is infused into the bosom of a statesman (if one so possessed can be called a statesman) it converts him at once into a visionary enthusiast. Then he indulges in golden dreams of national greatness and prosperity. He discovers that 'liberty is power,' and not content with vast schemes of improvement at home, which it would bankrupt the treasury of the world to execute, he flies to foreign ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... a rifle enthusiast, and it astonished her how rapidly she improved in marksmanship. With a little instruction from Arthurs and the cowboys in the matter of sighting and holding her weapon, she developed quickly from a stage of dangerous uncertainty in her gunnery to one of almost ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... piano—a magnificent instrument, which was the joy and solace of the recluse in his self-imposed exile. I had often sat for hours, while he played upon it, listening to the wonderful melody he produced. He was an enthusiast in music, and when he played he seemed to be inspired. Almost invariably his pipe was in his mouth when seated at the instrument, and I supposed his two joys afforded him a double rapture. I used to think, if it had been my case, I could ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... at last the divine spark from the soul of the young enthusiast. Her eyes were wide and shining without tears when she slipped both arms about his neck and ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... agitation of the animal spirits. He did not altogether condemn poetry, but certainly looked upon it as the folle du logis, which must be strictly supervised by the reason. Boileau is the aesthetic equivalent of Cartesian intellectualism, Boileau que la raison a ses regles engage, Boileau the enthusiast for allegory. France was infected with the mathematical spirit of Cartesianism and all possibility of a serious consideration of poetry and of art was thus removed. Witness the diatribes of Malebranche against the imagination, and listen to the Italian, Antonio ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... forwardness, and I hope will be ready within three or four weeks. They could not be stopped now, but on paying their whole price, which will be considerable. If the undertakers are afraid to undo what they have done, encourage them to it by a recommendation from the Assembly. You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the world, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... "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 to Henry Fitzowen, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... artistic rise without a certain freedom and joy in sensual life. Prudery always has made true aesthetic unfolding impossible. Yet if we yielded here, we would again be pushed away from our real problem. The aesthetic enthusiast might think it a blessing for the American nation if a great aesthetic outburst were secured, even by the ruin of moral standards: a wonderful blossoming of fascinating flowers from a swampy soil in an atmosphere full of moral miasmas. To be sure, even then it is very doubtful ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... place, I am too frivolous a young man for her, while you are a serious person, you are a morally and physically well-regulated person, you—hush, I have not finished, you are a conscientiously disposed enthusiast, a genuine type of those devotees of science, of whom—no not of whom—whereof the middle class of Russian gentry are so justly proud! And, secondly, Elena caught me the ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... meals in silence, eating in silence, and marching out in silence. They had been trained to the "lock step" discipline, until they were quiet and good to a high degree. The old superintendent having resigned on account of age, an experienced teacher, who was an enthusiast in education, succeeded him in that office. Feeling depressed by the lack of life among the children, the latter concluded, after a few weeks, to break the routine by taking thirty of the older boys and girls to a circus. But shortly before the appointed day one of these girls ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... thought thee but a wild enthusiast, gentle Nigel, and this confirms it. Mystery, aye, such mystery as ever springs from actions at variance with reason, judgment, valor—with all that frames the patriot. Would that thou wert the representative of thy royal line; wert thou in Earl Robert's place, thus, thus would ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... attired in a nightshirt tucked into a pair of trousers, was rushing here and there, now loudly demanding more water, and then stopping to swear at the bottle-thrower or some other enthusiast. "Web's" smoothness was all gone, and the language he used was, as Abigail Mullett said afterward, "enough to bring down a ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... unjust to have one measure for him, and another for those about him and opposed to him. But it is not too much to say that in temper, in honesty, in labour, in humility, in reverence, he was the most perfect example that the world had yet seen of the student of nature, the enthusiast for knowledge. That such a man was tempted and fell, and suffered the Nemesis of his fall, is an instance of the awful truth embodied in the tragedy of Faust. But his genuine devotion, so unwearied and so paramount, to a ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... hear'st the sweet Enthusiast, own Thy fancy's various florets look'd less gay When kiss'd by bright Italia's ardent sun, Than now their hues expand ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... is honest, because he has no wish for an office in the Court of Session; he will try his abilities in a wider sphere. Rumours of a coalition in the county of Ayr between Sir Adam Ferguson and the Earl of Eglintoun he hopes are unfounded, 'both as an enthusiast for ancient feudal attachments, and as having the honour and happiness to be married to his lordship's relation, a true Montgomerie, whom I esteem, whom I love, after fifteen years, as on the day when she gave me her hand.' He assures the people they will have ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... seem that about twelve years before a philanthropic American enthusiast, armed with a letter of recommendation from whoever at that date was President of Mexico, and escorted by a small guard, descended upon San Jose to vaccinate it. For a few days all went well, for the enthusiast ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... course of your trade, have accommodated yourself to twenty different fashions, and have served twenty classes of customers; have copied at one time a Parisian, at another a London fashion, and have truckled to the humours, now of a precise enthusiast, and now of ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... missionary enthusiast must have erected these edifices," said Miss Church-Member as they were turning to enter the section devoted to ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... Isabel's literary activities, she cultivated a real interest in agriculture and cattle-raising. For she, being at heart perhaps an emotional enthusiast, always cultivated the practical side of life, and prided herself on her mastery of practical affairs. Thus the husband and wife had spent the five years of their married life. The last had been one of blindness and unspeakable intimacy. And ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... 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 Twist, in quick succession, ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... us from the Wild West—a cow-puncher and lassoo expert. The obvious name for him was Arizona;[12] and Arizona he remained. I have even heard him referred to as Captain Arizona. An enthusiast in whatever he took up, he was in turn scout officer, transport officer, Lewis gun officer, quartermaster and company commander. But it is as sports officer that he will be best remembered—training the football or running teams, coaching the tug-of-war, organising cricket or ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... enthusiast, writer, glorifier of the Sierras, is held in affectionate memory the world over, but especially in California, where he was known as a delightful personality. Real pleasure and a good understanding of his nature ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... 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 ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... the authority of one of the managers, that there was not that day a solvent bank in Scotland. The different conversations rise to a babel, various speakers enforce their views on the floor with umbrellas, one enthusiast exhorts his brother unfortunates from a chair, when suddenly there is a hush, and then in a painful silence the shareholders hang on the lips of the accountant, from whom they learn that things could not be worse, that the richest shareholder ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... specimens on the tables. I believe this puts me through the list of nuts as far as anything new is concerned. I am quite an enthusiast about the black walnut. There is a double purpose in the black walnut here in Iowa because our saw mill men tell me, and we have the largest manufacturing walnut mills here in Iowa, they tell me the Iowa grown walnut is the most valuable black walnut and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... the room. He was a youth named Denton, one year out of college, eager and high-spirited, an enthusiast of his profession, loving it for its adventurousness and its sense of responsibility and power. These are the qualities that make the real newspaper man. They die soon, and that is why there are no good, old reporters. Elias M. Pierce ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... making any remarks on the character of Joan of Arc, as delineated in the First part of Henry VI.; first, because I do not in my conscience attribute it to Shakspeare, and secondly, because in representing her according to the vulgar English traditions, as half sorceress, half enthusiast, and in the end, corrupted by pleasure and ambition, the truth of history, and the truth of nature, justice, and common sense, are equally violated. Schiller has treated the character nobly: but in ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... high road, and is, therefore, but little known to those luxurious amateurs of the picturesque, who view nature through the windows of a carriage and four. Nor, indeed, is there anything, whether of scenery or association, in the place itself, sufficient to allure the more sturdy enthusiast from the beaten tracks which tourists and guide-books prescribe to those who search the Sublime and Beautiful amidst the mountain homes of the ancient Britons. Still, on the whole, the village is not without its attractions. It is placed in a small valley, through ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... go. It was something that Mrs. Rayner could not help remarking,—his unconquerable aversion to every mention of the army and of his own slight experience on the frontier. He would not talk of it even with Nellie, who was an enthusiast and had spent two years of her girlhood almost under the shadow of Laramie Peak and loved the mere mention of the Wyoming streams and valleys. In her husband's name Mrs. Rayner had urged him to drop his business early in the spring and come to them for a visit. He declared it ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... children above where Hester sat, he made his way towards the crowd of faces below. When he reached her he seized her arm from behind and began to raise at once and push her down the stair. He, too, was an enthusiast in his way. Some of the faces below grew red with anger, and their eyes flamed at the doctor. A loud murmur arose, and several began to force their way up to rescue her, as they would one of their own from the police. But Hester, the moment ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... justice was not done to Lincoln's censure. In his speech at Cooper 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 Republican national convention condemned the act of ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... individual manner or matter it is impossible to give abstracts, such as those which have been easy, and it may be hoped profitable, in some of the foregoing chapters; and prolonged analyses of form are tedious, except to the expert and the enthusiast. With some brief account, therefore, of the persons who chiefly composed this remarkable mass of lyric we may close a notice of the subject which is superficially inadequate to its importance, but which, perhaps, will not seem so to those who are content not merely to count ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... life. Criticism, they hold, is a kind of disease to which some people are subject, and which, in extreme cases, may easily be fatal. The healthy state, on the other hand, they think, is that of the enthusiast; of the man who believes and never doubts. Now, that such a state is happy I am very ready to admit; but I cannot hold that it is healthy. How could it be, unless it were based upon a sound, intellectual foundation? But no such foundation has been or will be reached except through ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... Fort Warren, however interesting and instructive it might be to our friends. A large portion of the forenoon was devoted to squad and company drill, and of the afternoon to battalion drill. The colonel, though a very diminutive man in stature, was an enthusiast in military matters, and had the reputation of being one of the most thorough and skilful officers in the state. Tom Somers, who, since he joined the company, had felt ashamed of himself because he was no bigger, became quite reconciled to ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... me." Then Gerard, who knew he was an excellent draughtsman, but not so good a colourist, begged her to stand to him as a Roman statue. He showed her how closely he could mimic marble on paper. She consented at first; but demurred when this enthusiast explained to her that she must wear the tunic, toga, and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen. The reformer England needs today is an energetic phonetic enthusiast: that is why I have made such a one the hero of a popular play. There have been heroes of that kind crying in the wilderness for many years past. When I became interested in the subject towards the end of the eighteen-seventies, Melville Bell was dead; but Alexander J. Ellis ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... utilization of the mountains for conserving the sources of all our great Western streams, by which millions of acres are to be irrigated and millions of homes built up in the West. He was from the first no "tenderfoot" adventurer, no visionary enthusiast, but a practical, hard-headed man far more earnestly and disinterestedly concerned in the Westerners' future than they ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... English "Faust," as he is not inaptly called, has both been misrepresented and misunderstood. An enthusiast he undoubtedly was, but not the drivelling dotard that some of his biographers imagine. A man of profound learning, distinguished for attainments far beyond the general range of his contemporaries, he, like Faustus, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... cease with his discovery of the Franklin expedition. He became an enthusiast concerning the arctic and seemed to enjoy its weird icy scenery and attendant perilous excitement. Believing that he could reach the north pole if he had a properly equipped expedition, he planned a fourth voyage and appealed to Congress ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... were oddly deaf. A classmate let fall the observation that it was because of a New York girl who had jilted him that Dean had forsworn society and stuck to a troop in the field: but men who knew and served with the young fellow found him an enthusiast in his profession, passionately fond of cavalry life in the open, a bold rider, a keen shot and a born hunter. Up with the dawn day after day, in saddle long hours, scouting the divides and ridges, stalking antelope and ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... enticed away by a bevy of young ladies, Hortense de Beauharnais leading them, to get the learned professor's opinion on some rare specimens of botany growing in the park. Nothing loath—for he was good-natured as he was clever, and a great enthusiast withal in the study of plants—he allowed the merry, talkative girls to lead him where they would. He delighted them in turn by his agreeable, instructive conversation, which was rendered still more piquant by the odd medley of French, Latin, and Swedish ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... motives stimulate are confined, so far as experience is able to teach us anything, to the following well-marked kinds, which have been already indicated: those of the artist, of the speculative thinker, of the religious and philanthropic enthusiast, and, lastly, those of the soldier. This list, if understood in its ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... choose, then understand that you are in direct conflict against Christ's purpose and prayer. He asked that you might be consecrated; and you have chosen to regard consecration as the craze of the fervid enthusiast. ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... bullets, so near, that the archbishop's gown was set on fire. The rest, coming up, dismounted, and dragged him out of the carriage, when, frightened and wounded, he crawled towards Hackston, who still remained on horseback, and begged for mercy. The stern enthusiast contented himself with answering, that he would not himself lay a hand on him. Burly and his men again fired a volley upon the kneeling old man; and were in the act of riding off, when one, who remained to girth his horse, unfortunately heard the daughter ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... is a very communicative, gay, and pleasant converser, and enlivened the whole day by his readiness upon all subjects.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 236. It is very likely that he is 'the ingenious writer' mentioned post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's 'Collection,' of whom Johnson said, 'Sir, he is an enthusiast by rule.' Mr. Windham records that Johnson, speaking of Warton's admiration of fine passages, said:—'His taste is amazement' (misprinted amusement). Windham's Diary, p. 20. In her Memoirs of Dr. Burney (ii. 82), Mme. D'Arblay says that Johnson 'at times, when in gay spirits, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... exclaimed, blushing. "Never, Willy. I beg of you, Miss Burns, don't believe that enthusiast of a schoolboy. If I really have talent, those sketches of mine in beer gazettes wouldn't prove it. As a matter of fact, I once did do some work in art. Why should I deny that, like all silly children of between sixteen and twenty, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... of any particular piece of camouflage depends entirely on its capability for deceit; but to the youthful enthusiast I would speak a word of warning. I have in mind the particular case of young Angus MacTaggart, a lad from Glasgow, with freckles and a sunny disposition. He was a sapper by trade, and on his shoulders there devolved, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... enjoyed seeing Hassler's face light up with childish pleasure. The ladies threw flowers, the men waved their hats, and the audience rushed for the platform. Every one wanted to shake the master's hand. Jean-Christophe saw one enthusiast raise the master's hand to his lips, another steal a handkerchief that Hassler had left on the corner of his desk. He wanted to reach the platform also, although he did not know why, for if at that moment he had found himself near Hassler, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... mayhap, take place this day, and Master Busy would not have missed such an event for the world, not though the roads lay thick with snow and the drifts rendered progress impossible to all save to the keenest enthusiast. He for one was glad enough that his master had seemed so unaccountably anxious for the company of his own serving men. Sir Marmaduke had ever been overfond of wandering about the lonely woods of ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... mill, and to continue the journey on horseback. Zeke, however, realized the advantage in continuing by machine, were this possible, and he suggested it to the driver. The man was doubtful, but, too, he was an enthusiast in his work, and the opportunity of thus climbing the mountains, where no other car had been, appealed strongly to his ambition. In the end, he consented, with a prudent stipulation concerning possible damages. So, without pause, the automobile shot forward ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... 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 ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... shuddered, and ended by believing all the good he had been saying about the drowned man. Then he held his tongue, suddenly seized with atrocious jealousy, fearing that the young widow loved the man he had flung into the water, and whom he now lauded with the conviction of an enthusiast. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... rolls receive his name, The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame; Resistless burns the fever of renown, Caught from the strong contagion of the gown: O'er Bodley's dome his future labors spread, And Bacon's mansion trembles ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... she declared, "to be a very dangerous person, a rabid enthusiast with brains and also stability—the most difficult order of person in the ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... these Oxford years Holland's fame as an original and independent thinker, a fascinating preacher, an enthusiast for Liberalism as the natural friend and ally of Christianity, was widening to a general recognition. And when, in April, 1884, Mr. Gladstone nominated him to a Residentiary Canonry at St. Paul's, everyone felt that ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... of 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 public ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... in this analogy of martyrdom. The truth is that the special impressiveness which does come from being persecuted only happens in the case of extreme persecution. For the fact that the modern enthusiast will undergo some inconvenience for the creed he holds only proves that he does hold it, which no one ever doubted. No one doubts that the Nonconformist minister cares more for Nonconformity than he does for his teapot. No one doubts that Miss Pankhurst wants a vote more than she wants a quiet afternoon ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 least a half-dozen ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... little chapel was as much to him as a large city church, influential and wealthy, could have been, as he loved his small and somewhat uninteresting congregation with his whole heart. Older men called him an enthusiast. Would that the world held more enthusiasts like him; men who have forsaken all to follow Him, men to whom the whole world and its riches are as nothing compared to the souls waiting to hear the tidings ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... manager, seems a perfect enthusiast, and too much cannot be said in praise of his self-denial. He has given up the whole of his private house, except one bedroom and the tiniest little scrap of an office, for the purposes of the Home. Truly the promoters of the movement ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... in our country may be mentioned that of Mr. Sargent at Wodeneshe. Mr. Sargent, as may be seen by his supplement to Downing's "Landscape-Gardening," is an enthusiast in the culture of conifers; he is reputed to have made liberal importations, and the results of his attempts at acclimation, given to the public, have aided others in like endeavors. Judge Field, of Princeton, New Jersey, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... life.) Joseph was educated at Winchester College, and became intimate there with William Collins. He wrote when quite young some poetry in the Gentleman's Magazine. He was in due time removed to Oriel College, where he composed two poems, entitled 'The Enthusiast,' and 'The Dying Indian.' In 1744, he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Oxford, and was ordained to his father's curacy at Basingstoke. He went thence to Chelsea, but did not remain there long, owing to some disagreement with ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... dwellings, with steep lofty roofs, accumulated in narrow alleys, seemed to date back to an age long anterior to Montcalm's final struggle with Wolfe on the heights; even back, perchance, to the brave enthusiast Champlain's first settlement under the superb headland, replacing the Indian village of Stadacona. To perpetuate his fame, a street alongside the river is called after him; and though his 'New France' has long since joined the dead names of extinct colonies, ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... robber-counts, without respect to creed, ravaged among the travelling public with a large-minded impartiality; and, down in the lowest rank of ravagers, the road-agents of the period stole all that their betters left for them to steal. As we passed the little town of Condrieu—where a lonely enthusiast stood up on the bank and waved a flag at us—we saw overtopping it, on a fierce little craggy height, the ruined stronghold of its ancient lords. Already, in the thirty miles or thereabouts that ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... in triumph, and Gradkoski, who loved a reputation for sagacity, turned a little green with disgust at his own forgetfulness. Gradkoski was among those founders of the Holy Land League with whom Raphael had kept up relations, and he could not deny that the young enthusiast was the ideal man for the post. De Haan, who was busy directing the clerks to write out ten thousand wrappers for the first number, and who had never heard of Raphael before, held a whispered confabulation with Gradkoski and Schlesinger and in a few moments Raphael ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... (but particularly Isabel) delighted in the high chivalrous legends of antiquity—and the tales of eternal constancy and self-devoted affection recorded of some of the earlier heroines of her family, were read with sacred veneration by the young enthusiast. In a mind of ordinary temperament, little harm would have resulted from the indulgence of such a taste; to the impassioned soul of Isabel it was destructive and fatal. Deprived by death of the mother who might have taught her to restrain and regulate her ardent feelings, they acquired by neglect ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... celebrated city cannot but long continue interesting, and to the classic enthusiast, just liberated from the cloisters of his college, the scenery and the ruins may for a season inspire delight. Philosophy may there point her moral apophthegms with stronger emphasis, virtue receive new incitements to perseverance, by reflecting on the honour which still attends the ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... instructor under thirty and a man nearing the end of his college course. When Diemann, just home from Germany, came West to teach Psychology, he found young Blake the college hero. The new instructor had himself been a noted back; he still hovered somewhere between enthusiast and fiend. At Stanford he at once identified himself with the football men, and they welcomed him gladly as assistant coach. During that first season, two years ago, he had come to know and like Fred Blake. Later, the fullback took Diemann's course ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... frowned up the moonlit track. There was still no sign of the coach. Yet time was short, and the morbid enthusiast was not to be disgusted; indeed, he was all enthusiasm now, and a less unattractive lad than the bushranger had hoped to find him. He looked the white screw and Oswald up and down as they sat in their saddles in the moonshine: ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... bellows learn'd to blow, While organs{24} yet were mute; Timotheus to his breathing flute, And sounding lyre, Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire. At last divine Cecilia came, Inventress of the vocal frame;{25} The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store, Enlarged the former narrow bounds, And added length to solemn sounds, With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before. Let old Timotheus yield the prize, Or both divide the crown: He rais'd a mortal to the skies; She drew ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin |
