"Zealot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... violent one he may be; and in that case he is not a good person to check the party. When the leading sect (so to speak) in Parliament is doing what the nation do not like, an instant appeal ought to be registered and Parliament ought to be dissolved. But a zealot of a Premier will not appeal; he will follow his formulae; he will believe he is doing good service when, perhaps, he is but pushing to unpopular consequences, the narrow maxims of an inchoate theory. At such a minute a constitutional king—such ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... we need sanity. No honesty will make a public man useful if that man is timid or foolish, if he is a hot-headed zealot or an impracticable visionary. As we strive for reform we find that it is not at all merely the case of a long uphill pull. On the contrary, there is almost as much of breeching work as of collar work; to depend only on traces means that there will soon be a runaway and an ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... himself redden. And a cold fear seemed to overwhelm him. He realized that Strom was a zealot, and he knew he would not hesitate to kill. This prompt penetration of his disguise was something ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... Directory are not so poor as to be unable to effect,) he may sit in Parliament; and there is no doubt that there is not one of your tests against Popery that he will not take as fairly, and as much ex animo, as the best of your zealot statesmen. I push this point no further, and only adduce this example (a pretty strong one, and fully in point) to show what I take to be the madness and folly of driving men, under the existing circumstances, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... established a creed more austere and grim than the Catholic. Opposite him stands Loyola, the reviver of Catholicism, infusing it with a new heroism and self-sacrifice; reaffirming and intensifying its authority; scornful of speculation, powerful in organization; zealot, missionary, educator; giving to ecclesiastical obedience an added emphasis, to organization ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... empress beauty, ev'n the face. There was enough of that here to assuage, (One would have thought) either thy lust or rage; Was't not enough, when thou, profane disease, Didst on this glorious temple seize: Was't not enough, like a wild zealot, there, All the rich outward ornaments to tear, Deface the innocent pride of beauteous images? Was't not enough thus rudely to defile, But thou must quite destroy the goodly pile? And thy unbounded sacrilege commit On th'inward holiest holy of her wit? ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... happens, it displays bad teeth ostentatiously gold-stopped. This man's smile was sincere and he had beautiful teeth. His hands were nervous and thin, his bearing was natural and his voice gentle. Here, evidently, was an altruist, perhaps a zealot, probably a celibate. He was introduced as a rural religionist from Gumma prefecture set on reforming his countrymen. It is important to know the strength of the reforming power which Japan is itself generating: here was a man who for eight years had ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the platform was waving his gingham like a shillelagh in sheer excitement, forgetting his new-found respectability and dreaming himself back at Donnybrook Fair. Him a conscientious constable floored with a truncheon. But a shower of fists fell on the zealot's face, and he tottered back bleeding. Then the storm broke in all its fury. The upper air was black with staves, sticks, and umbrellas, mingled with the pallid hailstones of knobby fists. Yells, and groans, and ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... politic, able, far-sighted, clean. His energy was without measure. The rise and reach of his influence and work have no chance for comparison with the accomplishment of any other American clergyman. There is none to name beside him. He was a burning zealot all his life. Elevation and honors came to him. He became a prince in his Church. He swept every avenue of power and influence within his grasp into that Church. He lived singly for it. In his death, his Church exalts herself. She gives, after her faith, prayers, Masses, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... scholar. He did not become a narrow and monotonous agitator. The variety of his intellectual sympathies, controlled by the constancy of a high moral impulse, wholly exempted him from the rashness of a conceited zealot; and, though often brilliant and at times rhetorical, his style was quiet and persuasive, reaching the reason as easily as the emotions. Coming as he did, out of slavery, at a time when the anti-slavery sentiment ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... his appeals to Allah, he felt totally at a loss to know what to do for the material benefit of the zealot. He was afraid that he would die from exhaustion. He was relieved when Abdul and the bearers came to his assistance. Abdul soon persuaded the man to drink some of the water which he had brought in a cup. As he did so, he noticed with satisfaction that ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... between man and his Maker; keenly appreciating all that was "of good report," and impatient of evil, or what seemed to him to be of evil tendency, even to intolerance, it must be admitted that in Arnold there was something of the zealot. With his acute sense of responsibility as to the spiritual state of the boys, it was natural that he should seek to impress those with whom he was brought in contact, and he did so. The personal notice he bestowed ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... may, it was not long afterwards that Juda, pious monarch as he was, ventured to hint to Zorah his opinion that the time had arrived when the Sacrifice of the Maidens might very well be abolished. But Zorah, a zealot of zealots, would not hear of such a thing, possibly because, among other reasons, the abolition would rob him of an appreciable amount of the power which he now possessed, and which power, it was hinted, had been more than once wielded to secure—for ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... cathedral." The concluding portion of his life, after his deposition, was spent in obscurity; nor did his successor in the bishoprick, subsequent to the reestablishment of Episcopacy at the Restoration,—Bishop Honeyman,—close his days more happily. He was struck in the arm by the bullet which the zealot Mitchell had intended for Archbishop Sharp; and the shattered bone never healed; "for, though he lived some years after," says Burnet, "they were forced to lay open the wound every year, for an exfoliation;" and his life was eventually shortened by his sufferings. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... enemies in order to recover their liberties. This would have been high treason in Richelieu's time,—as when the Huguenots encouraged the invasion of the English on the soil of France. Savonarola was a zealot, and carried the same spirit into politics that he did into religion,—such as when he made a bonfire of what he called vanities. He had an end to carry: he would use any means. There is apt to be a spirit of Jesuitism ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... mechanical instructor. They thundered them into the opening ears of thousands who had never been roused to moral sentiment before. They inspired the souls of poor and commonplace creatures with all the zealot's fire and all the martyr's endurance. They brought tears to penitent eyes which had never been moistened before by any but the selfish sense of personal pain or grief. They pierced through the dull, vulgar, contaminated hideousness of low and vicious life, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... for the last. Fifteen years ago it was the fashion to point at Lord Hugh Cecil as a belated upholder of exploded superstitions; as an "ecclesiastical layman" (the phrase was meant to be sarcastic) who lived in a realm of speculative theology, out of touch with all practical life; as a zealot, a bigot, a would-be persecutor; an interesting survival of the Middle Age; a monk who had strayed into politics. To-day we salute him as the one Member of Parliament who has had the courage to affirm the supremacy of ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... meeting-place, who practised "lying, swearing, and other sins," gradually yielded so far to his brother apprentice's importunity as to leave these off, to try to pray sometimes when alone, to attend church three times a day, and to visit the dissenting prayer-meeting. Like the zealot who thought to do God service by keeping the whole law, Carey lived thus for a time, "not doubting but this would produce ease of mind and make me acceptable to God." What revealed him to himself was an incident which he tells in language recalling ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... and prudent disciples, ready to flee or to stand and suffer as duty called; the good men who shrunk from complicity with a bloodthirsty mob, and were stirred to sympathy with his victims; and the zealot, who with headlong rage hated his brother for the love of God. But the curtain drops, and Luke turns to his true theme. He picks up the threads again in verse 4, telling of the dispersal of the disciples, with the significant addition of their occupation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... him, in reply, of the frequent revolutions of fortune's wheel, and warned him that the advancement of which he boasted would probably be an entire degradation. He bitterly recalled to the remembrance of the new zealot for Romanism his former earnest efforts to establish Calvinism. He reproached him, too, with having melted up the silver images of the Mechlin churches, including even the renowned shrine of Saint Rombout, which the Prince of Orange had always respected. "I don't say how ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... because "popery is established in the extensive province of Quebec," a falsehood so open and shameless, that it can need no confutation among those who know that of which it is almost impossible for the most unenlightened zealot to be ignorant: ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... Zealot.—When we see an eager assailant of one of these wrongs, a special reformer, we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your one virtue? Is ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... immitigable zealot. "We are not wont to show an idle courtesy to that sex which requireth the stricter discipline.—What sayest thou, maid? Shall thy silken bridegroom suffer thy share of ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Madame Midas esteemed him highly on this account. Though Marchurst had often tried to convert her, she refused to believe in the shallow sophistries he set forth, and told him she had her own views on religion, which views she declined to impart to him, though frequently pressed to do so. The zealot regretted this obstinacy, as, according to his creed, she was a lost soul, but he liked her too well personally to quarrel with her on that account, consoling himself with the reflection that sooner or later, she would seek the fold. He was more successful ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... the wrath of Francis against Brother Philip, a Zealot of the Poor Ladies, who had accepted this privilege in his absence. His attitude was so firm that other documents of the same nature granted by Ugolini at the same epoch were not indorsed by the pope until three ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... I made my own act! because I thought it too great a sensibility in my friend; and thought it (since it was done) better to be supposed marked by me than the Author himself. The real state of which, this zealot rashly and injudiciously exposes! I ask the reader, Whether anything but an earnestness to disparage me could provoke the Editor, in behalf of Mr. ADDISON, to say that he marked it out of caution against me: when I had taken upon me to say, it was ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... Now this young zealot was a man of imagination, hidebound only in his traditions. Also, he was not above taking ideas ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... all must have come partly from the eager talk of a few of the students—the girl who wasn't ever going to give up her job, even if she did marry; the man who saw a future in these motion pictures; the shaggy-haired zealot who talked about profit-sharing (which was a bold radicalism back in 1905; almost as subversive of office discipline as believing in unions). Partly it came from the new sorts of business magazines for the man who didn't, like his fathers, insist, "I guess I can run my business ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... I should have set this thing to different words. I regarded Mrs. Potts as a zealot whom no advantage of worldly resource could blind to our shortcomings, nor deter from ministering unto them. Had it been unnecessary to earn bread for herself and little Roscoe, I am persuaded that she ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... discovering books for one's self is not always widespread. There are many who, for one reason or another, prefer to have their books found out for them. But for the complete zealot nothing transcends the zest of pioneering for himself. And therefore working for a publisher is, to a certain type of mind, a never-failing fascination. As H. M. Tomlinson says in "Old Junk," that fascinating collection of sensitive and beautifully poised sketches ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... questions; but as he was most conspicuous among the advocates of a more perfect union, he was careful not to present the motion himself. Keeping in the background, he persuaded another member—John Tyler, father of the president of that name, a fierce zealot for state rights—to make the motion. The plan, however, was "so little acceptable that it was not then persisted in," and the motion was laid on the table. But Madison knew what was coming from Maryland, and bided ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... of theory: one well worthy of mention, Mr. W. D. Howells; and none ever couched a lance with narrower convictions. His own work and those of his pupils and masters singly occupy his mind; he is the bondslave, the zealot of his school; he dreams of an advance in art like what there is in science; he thinks of past things as radically dead; he thinks a form can be outlived: a strange immersion in his own history; a strange ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Allen rose to report for the Worker committee. The fund had been completed, the first number of the paper was to appear next week, and it was now up to every member of the local to get up on his toes and hustle as never in his life before. Comrade Mary, with her thin, eager face of a religious zealot, made ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... thence to the joys of heaven. Terrible, electrical preaching! It was the product of uncultured genius and human disappointment. Marion sat in awe, hardly knowing whether it was impious or angelic. In a blind exordium the old zealot commanded those who would save their souls to walk forward and kneel publicly at the altar, and make their struggle there ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... wisdom with each studious year, In meditation dwelt, with learning wrought, And shaped his weapon with an edge severe, Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer; The lord of irony,—that master spell, Which stung his foes to wrath, which grew from fear, And doomed him to the zealot's ready hell, Which answers to all doubts ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... a black man is always before them. They are benevolent and excellent people; but if a black man happened to have broken his shin, and a white man were in danger of drowning, we much fear that a real anti-slavery zealot would bind up the black man's leg before he would draw the white man out of the water. It is not an inconsistency, therefore, that while we see only cause of congratulation in this wonderful increase of trade, Lord Brougham sees ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... overshadowing power of Spain. Still did he implore help for the oppressed. Long did he carry in his heart a picture of the queen—whom he adored in spite of her unworthiness—as the zealous and devoted champion of a great cause. But Elizabeth was no zealot, nor could she be made one. When Sidney at length realized that the queen could not be induced to move in the cause of the Netherlands, he made up his mind to go as a volunteer to the assistance of William, Prince of Orange, ruler ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... my noble zealot, to win her friendship, who will have validity and power until the crown prince reigns, and this old godless freethinker of a king is in his gravel Then Prussia will commence a new era, and we shall be lords, and guide the machine of state. For such lofty aims one ought to be ready to compromise ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... the lugubrious conviction that he was the only man in that great assemblage who felt enough of the zealot's fire to be willing to put all ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... "I know him well, too well for a poor man!—a Jew of the Jews, a Zealot, they say. At least he hates us Romans enough to be one, although many is the dinner that I have eaten at his palace. He is the most successful trader in all Tyre, unless it be his rival Amram, the Phoenician, but a hard man, and as able as he is ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... of mortal man! we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry; Whose mind but means his sum of thought, an essence ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... day, with their grievous yellyhooing. During the time of the psalm and the sermon, they behaved themselves better, but when the induction came on, their clamour was dreadful; and Thomas Thorl, the weaver, a pious zealot in that time, he got up and protested, and said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." And I thought ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... entreaties, police and all, we followed him into the street, where, displaying a histrionic ability which was truly French, he proceeded to reconstruct and rehearse his great adventure with the enthusiasm of a zealot. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... teaching, and that the national safety demanded the defeat and dissolution of the Republican party. Thus challenged, the Republican party did not stand on the defensive. Many of its members openly expressed their pity for the zealot, whose rashness had led him to indefensible deeds and thence to the scaffold. On the day of his execution, bells were tolled in many Northern towns —not in approval of what Brown had done, but from compassion for ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... illumination Creed saw Judith Barrier standing at the door of his own house, smiling at him tremulously, with the immemorial challenge in her dark eyes. To that challenge the native man in him—the lover—so long usurped by the zealot, the would-be philanthropist, rose thrilling, yet still bewildered and uncertain, to respond. Something heady and ancient and eternally young seemed to pass into his soul out of the night and the moonlight ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... cannot so readily answer. If by abolitionist you mean a zealot, I am none; but if you mean a man, who, being a man, feels for all men, slaves included, and by any lawful act, opposed to nobody's interest, and therefore, rousing nobody's enmity, would willingly abolish suffering (supposing it, in its degree, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville |
