"Enthusiast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... botanical draftsman to the expedition at a salary of 315 pounds. He was an Austrian, forty years of age, an enthusiast in his work, and a man of uncommon industry. He made 1600 botanical drawings which, in Robert Brown's opinion, were "for beauty, accuracy and completion of detail unequalled in this or in any other ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... this levitation was as real as the flight of a bird, and very strong evidence would be necessary to make us believe that such a movement had really been executed. But the case is different if we are dealing with the conviction of an enthusiast that he rose aloft or even with the conviction of his disciples, that they, being in an ecstasy, saw him do so. There is no reason to doubt the subjective reality of well-authenticated visions and as motives and stimuli to action they may have real objective importance. Miracles ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... 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 chief place in the thoughts and life of his son, Louis VII., called the Young, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the Wagnerian enthusiast to me, "the cornet has now the Brunnhilda motive." It seems to me, in my then state of depravity, as if the cornet had even more than this the ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... been turned upside down without affecting its expression. His forehead, however, was high and thinly covered with sandy hair. I should have said, as a phrenologist, Will feeble,—emotional, but not passionate,—likely to be enthusiast, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... himself to be his man. On this point he was immovable, although Bohemond tried the effect of a threat (which was never forgiven), that if the quarrel came to blows, he should be found on the side of the Emperor. But Alexius soon saw that in Raymond he had to deal with an enthusiast as sincere and persistent as Godfrey. He took his measures accordingly, winning the heart of the old warrior, although he failed to compel ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... and the resurrection. They may still regard Christ as an unusual man, but they will not make much headway in converting people to Christianity, if they declare Jesus to be nothing more than a man and either a deliberate impostor or a deluded enthusiast. ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... dogmatic ramparts; and meanwhile, within and out of shot, dwelt in her private garden which she watered with grateful tears. It seems strange to say of this colourless and ineffectual woman, but she was a true enthusiast, and might have made the sunshine and the glory of a cloister. Perhaps none but Archie knew she could be eloquent; perhaps none but he had seen her - her colour raised, her hands clasped or quivering - glow with gentle ardour. There is a corner of the policy of Hermiston, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... game of "room to let," Bonaparte had no remembrance whatever of the ambitious wishes of the first consul; the whole world seemed to have set, the memories of his youth passed before his eyes in such beauty, saluting him with the gracious looks of childhood, as nearly to make him an enthusiast. ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... do not answer each other; they ignore each other. Genuine controversy, fair cut and thrust before a common audience, has become in our special epoch very rare. For the sincere controversialist is above all things a good listener. The really burning enthusiast never interrupts; he listens to the enemy's arguments as eagerly as a spy would listen to the enemy's arrangements. But if you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will find that no medium is admitted between violence ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... 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. Trampas was foiled of his fish, or of learning how ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... contains every subject from tar water to the Trinity; however, all the women read it, and understand it no more than if it were intelligible.' Editions of Siris followed each other in rapid succession, and it was translated into French and German. The work is that of an enthusiast, and it should be read not for its argument, but for its wealth of suggestiveness, and for what Mr. Balfour calls 'a certain quality of moral elevation and speculative diffidence alien both to the literature and the life of the eighteenth century.' ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Harrington, "I answer no; nor do I (remember) compare Lord Herbert in these respects with his successors. He was an amiable enthusiast; in many respects resembling Mr. Newman himself. Do you remember, by the way, how that most reasonable rejecter of all 'external' revelation prayed that he might be directed by Heaven whether he should ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... 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 ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... even this enthusiast wearied of his hobby, and of the year's routine. A longing to see brother scientists of his own way of thinking would seize him, and he would abruptly depart for London, to occupy quiet lodgings, and indulge in intercourse with his fellow-men. Braddock rarely gave early intimation ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... replied earnestly. "Even Mr. Willard, who, as you may have observed, is not an enthusiast, said the other day that you ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... as exemplified on the pianoforte keyboard: and when all this has been done we shall have a cultivated musical public—a public that is able to discriminate between the good and the bad, the true and the false art."[3] This may perhaps be the counsel of perfection of an enthusiast, but progress lies more along the lines of appreciation of music than in the personal performance of it. There are thousands who are able to appreciate the technical mastery of an instrument to every one who can accomplish it. ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... modern representatives, the Parsees, Burton paid a visit to the Parsee "burying place"—the high tower where the dead are left to be picked by vultures, and then he and his wife left for Goa, where they enjoyed the hospitality and company of Dr. Gerson Da Cunha, [295] the Camoens student and enthusiast. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... equally far removed from the excesses of the legalist, the pietist, the ascetic, and the enthusiast. With the strictest obedience to the law, he moved in the element of freedom; with all the fervor of the enthusiast, he was always calm, sober, and self-possessed; notwithstanding his complete and uniform elevation ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... ultimate ground on which the after temple of morality, as a system, upraises itself—if we can be challenged here on our own ground, and fail to make it good, what we call the life of the soul becomes a dream of a feeble enthusiast, and we moralists a mark for the sceptic's finger to ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... drink to your health, Mr. Browning," and Landor bowed with his inimitable, courteous grace, raising his glass to his lips. For some years, whenever Wordsworth visited London, Forster invited Browning to meet him. The younger poet was never an enthusiast in his mild friendship for the elder, although in after years (1875) he replied to a question by Rev. A. B. Grosart, the editor of Wordsworth's works, that while in hasty youth he did "presume to use the great and venerated personality of Wordsworth as a sort of ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... somewhat wearisome, and his audience grew gradually less, until it was reduced to twenty passengers. But this did not disconcert the enthusiast, who proceeded with the story of Joseph Smith's bankruptcy in 1837, and how his ruined creditors gave him a coat of tar and feathers; his reappearance some years afterwards, more honourable and honoured than ever, at Independence, Missouri, ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... time when you knelt by my bed and bound up my wound in a foreign land, I have cherished the hope of uniting you forever to our life. When you left us, I was angry at seeing my hope baffled. Now then, enthusiast, we have you safe—safe in our private book and in our arms." He drew ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... escap'd his lab'ring breast:— "Sweet Health! thou wilt revisit this sad frame; Slumber shall bid these aching eyelids rest, And I shall live for love, perchance for fame." Ah! poor enthusiast!—in the day's decline A mournful knell was ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... p. 50), the dancer must, if his activity will allow of it, raise the forward foot until its toe is as high as the knee of the rear or supporting leg. It is an exercise not to be attempted all at once in its completeness, because it is one well calculated to send the inexperienced enthusiast sprawling on his back. Its study should be approached gently, by way of familiarity with the simpler movement, which, once it is mastered, may easily be extended to the harder one. The latter must be approached ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... an officer joined 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, ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... tracts of land in the Northern part of the State of New York, which were the nucleus of their large fortunes. I have often heard Cousin Gerrit complain of the time he lost managing the estate. His son Greene was an enthusiast in the natural sciences and took but little interest in property matters. Later, his grandson, Gerrit Smith Miller, assumed the burden of managing the estate and, in addition, devoted himself to agriculture. He imported a fine breed of Holstein cattle, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... some hint of the possible route the caravan would follow, became not only a supporter of the scheme, but an enthusiast, because her own home was not distant, and she made the children promise to spend a day there with her brother, the farmer. She also gave Janet some ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... standing together in the balcony. The beams of the summer moon rested upon the upturned brow of the young enthusiast, and filled her eyes with a holy fire, and the words of love that had trembled upon Anthony's lips were dismissed from his thoughts as light and vain. She looked too pure to address to her, at such a moment, the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... intelligence: Philistia has come to be thought by us the true Land of Promise, and it is anything but that; the born lover of ideas, the born hater of commonplaces, must feel in this country, that the sky over his head is of brass and iron. The enthusiast for the idea, for reason, values reason, the idea, in and for themselves; he values them, irrespectively of the practical conveniences which their triumph may obtain for him; and the man who regards the possession of these practical conveniences as something sufficient in itself, something which ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... action in the pulpit has been censured by many, as participating too much of the theatrical manner, and having more the air of an itinerant enthusiast, than a grave ecclesiastic. Perhaps it may be true, that his pulpit gesticulations were too violent, yet they bore strong expressions of sincerity, and the side on which he erred, was the most favourable to the audience; as the extreme of over-acting any part, is not half so intolerable as ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... atmosphere of business, his mind seemed to recover its former freshness. "How beautiful this stillness is!" said he: "it reminds me of the mythology of the heathen world; the ancients used to say that when Pan slept, all nature held its breath, lest it should awake him. You have made an enthusiast of Frances; nothing will do for her now ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... against government." In the third edition appears a portrait of the author, posing theatrically, with the inscription, "To the defender of humanity, of truth, of liberty!" The salons caught the temper of the time. Voltairean as they were, disposed to set down Rousseau as an enthusiast or a charlatan, they could not resist the invasion of passion or of sensibility. It mingled with a swarm of incoherent ideas and gave them a new intensity of life. The incessant play of intellect flashed and glittered for many spirits ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... else of his expenditure of energies beyond the needs of self-support. The Plains are the natural pasture of the continent; but they have no natural fascination for the white man which can induce him to take up his residence there for cattle-breeding en amateur. The greatest enthusiast in butter and cheese would scarcely care to accumulate mountains of rancid firkins and boxes for the mere gratification of fancy. Access to a market is his only justification for spending a nomadic lifetime among herds, or a fortune on churns and presses. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... despotism that might annihilate all I had been, all I hoped to be,—that might compel me to denounce all that I had taught, to hear all that was respectable and healthy in the world jeer at me as an impostor, an enthusiast, a madman. It was not that I was simply invited to come above the ordinary doctrines of the day, and stand supported and encouraged by a few advanced minds; but I was called to place myself where the most earnest souls—unless a second ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... unmoved. The grey-haired schoolmistress was a woman of ideas and ambitions beyond her apparent scope in life. She had read her Carlyle and Ruskin, and in her calling she was an enthusiast. But, in the words of the Elizabethan poet, she was perhaps 'unacquainted still with her own soul.' She imagined herself a Radical; she was in truth a tyrant. She preached Ruskin and the simple life; ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 surround him ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... significance in the family history deserves notice, especially as suggesting a peculiar feature in her early training and supplying a link in the chain of providential events. In work among the young her father was an enthusiast. With a heart bigger than her own family circle, her mother took in two orphans to foster and rear. Thus in the work of caring for the outcast and the forlorn Annie Macpherson was "to the manner born." Inheriting her father's enthusiasm and her mother's sympathetic nature, the quick-witted, ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... 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 ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... letter to the decency, the utility, and the necessity of scrupulously preserving the appearances of both. When I say the appearances of religion, I do not mean that you should talk or act like a missionary or an enthusiast, nor that you should take up a controversial cudgel against whoever attacks the sect you are of; this would be both useless and unbecoming your age; but I mean that you should by no means seem to approve, encourage, or applaud, those libertine notions, which strike at religions equally, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... French poet and member of the Pleiade, was born at Venice in 1532. He was the natural son of the scholar Lazare de Baif, who was at that time French ambassador at Venice. Thanks, perhaps, to the surroundings of his childhood, he grew up an enthusiast for the fine arts, and surpassed in zeal all the leaders of the Renaissance in France. His father spared no pains to secure the best possible education for his son. The boy was taught Latin by Charles Estienne, and Greek by Ange Vergece, the Cretan scholar and calligraphist who designed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... precedence was renewed by our estimable President, in his brilliant "Rhymes on Art;" where he maintains that "the narrative of an action is not comparable to the action itself before the eyes;" while the enthusiast BARRY considers painting "as poetry realised."[B] This error of genius, perhaps first caught from Richardson's bewildering pages, was strengthened by the extravagant principle adopted by Darwin, who, to exalt ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... enthusiasta fanatic, I should call it; and an enthusiast sees but one object in the universe, and that the object of his enthusiasm. It is all right, to him; but it is all wrong ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... the Case.—I am an enthusiast, and I am jotting down on this sheet of paper the story of my last exploit. A few days since I saw a dear little fellow in long clothes deserted by its mother, and took quite an interest in it. The next I hear of the sweet little boy is that he had been caught ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... 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 the tallest trees with his golden finger, and was welcomed with a gush ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... his master! Fouquet thought Aramis was right, that this newly-arrived was a king as pure in his race as the other, and that, for having repudiated all participation in this coup d'etat, so skillfully got up by the General of the Jesuits, he must be a mad enthusiast, unworthy of ever dipping his hands in political grand strategy work. And then it was the blood of Louis XIII. which Fouquet was sacrificing to the blood of Louis XIII.; it was to a selfish ambition he was sacrificing a noble ambition; to the right of keeping he sacrificed the right of having. The ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to the duty of redistributing the property of other people. Perhaps he belonged to that class of political economists which considers superfluous population an evil; perhaps he was a religious enthusiast, and ardently longed that all mankind should speedily see the pearly gates of ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... intolerant ideas of a bookworm who by no means grudges the pleasure which other readers receive from what does not please him to enthusiasm. And pleasure, not edification, is the end of all art. We are all pleased when we write; the public of one enthusiast every author enjoys, and the literary men who depreciate the joys of their own art or profession may not be consciously uncandid, but they are decidedly ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... divine Stradivarius! Played on by ancient maestros until the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate, young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold agonies, and wail his monotonous despair. Passed from his dying hand to the cold virtuoso, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... out of this saying an increased certainty that he had nothing to fear from this strange 'King'; and half-amused contempt for a dreamer, and half-pitying wonder at such lofty claims from such a helpless enthusiast, prompted his question, 'Art Thou a king then?' One can fancy the scornful emphasis on that 'Thou.' and can understand how grotesquely absurd the notion of his prisoner's being a king must ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... the social feeling 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... stranger can derive any solid satisfaction from the descent by a gloomy underground passage and from fleeting glimpses of ancient walls and dwellings seen through a forest of wooden baulks, which serve to support the spaces excavated, he must indeed be an enthusiast. But most people, perhaps all sensible people, will be content to take the undoubted interest of Herculaneum on trust, probably agreeing (at any rate after their visit) that the inspection of this subterranean city is not worth the candle, by whose flickering ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... readjustment of sovereignty were coming in America, it would be prudent for her to be on hand to press her own claims. On February 6, 1778, the treaty between France and America was signed.[1] Long before this, however, a young French enthusiast who proved to be the most conspicuous of all the foreign volunteers, the Marquis de Lafayette, had come over with magnificent promises from Silas Deane. On being told, however, that the Congress found it impossible to ratify Deane's promises, he modestly requested to enlist in the army without pay. ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... constitution of their Church had given great experience in management of business and discussion. Dr. MacDermott, Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, was the official head of his Church for the year only and had not equal knowledge of administration. An orator, with a touch of the enthusiast in his temperament, he was a simple and sympathetic figure; vehement in his political faith, yet responsive to all the human charities and deeply a lover of his country. There was no better representative there of Ulster, of the Ulster difficulty—at once so separate from and so akin ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... "Well, you know, I have never been an enthusiast over money-making, and I don't believe Steve ever will be,—though ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... himself, Beetle, and McTurk as candidates; confessed to a long-smothered interest in first-flowerings, early butterflies, and new arrivals, and volunteered, if Mr. Hartopp saw fit, to enter on the new life at once. Being a master, Hartopp was suspicious; but he was also an enthusiast, and his gentle little soul had been galled by chance-heard remarks from the three, and specially Beetle. So he was gracious to that repentant sinner, and entered the three names in ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... of Monday morning were wholly musical. The first part of the programme consisted of the cantata "The Musical Enthusiast," and the second part of a piano recital. All the music presented was of a high order, most of it ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 9, September, 1896 • Various
... in a strange way—among children and poor people—going about preaching and making clothes. A little of that is all very well; I suppose we might all do more of it, and not hurt ourselves; but is not Miss Maryland quite an enthusiast?' ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... in a firm yet sweet and melodious voice, and I at once saw that she was an enthusiast in the cause. My uncle regarded her with a look of surprise and admiration, and bowing, said,—"I have often heard of you, Donna Paola Salabriata, and rejoice to have the ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... doing so, and accordingly the young man breakfasted at the same table as myself and my family. I found he was an entire stranger to the district, and he volunteered the statement that he had never been in Yorkshire before his present visit. An enthusiast upon Yorkshire scenery, I was anxious to know what he had seen of the beautiful broad shire. "I've been nowhere," he replied, "except to a little ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... to speak a few words. The bishop would not hear him, but, at the intercession of a friend, he was permitted. In the following speech, there is a spirit of prophecy which entitles it to particular attention; they were not the words of a random enthusiast, but of one to whom God seems to have given an assurance, that the present abject state of his faithful people should ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... was descended from the O'Conors with one N—— started life as a poet and an enthusiast. His mother had designed him for the priesthood, and at the age of fifteen, most of his verses had an ecclesiastical tinge, but, somehow or other, he got into the newspaper business instead, and became a pessimistic gentleman, ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... Here were the letters Charlotte Bronte had written to her brother and to her sisters during her second sojourn in Brussels—to 'Dear Branwell' and 'Dear E. J.,' as she calls Emily—letters even to handle will give a thrill to the Bronte enthusiast. Here also were the love-letters of Maria Branwell to her lover Patrick Bronte, which are referred to in Mrs. Gaskell's biography, but have never ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... But let no enthusiast set out to walk from one city to the other on the strength of what is here written. After this sketch was first printed—in The Atlantic Monthly—a gentleman who ought to know whereof he speaks sent me word that my informants were all of them wrong—that the road does not ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... old enthusiast, who believed himself to have the control and direction of the weather. He leaves Imlac his successor, but implores him not to interfere with the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... of Mr. John Quincy Adams, that Calhoun, in common with most Southern men of that day, approved the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and gave a written opinion that it was a constitutional measure. That he was still an enthusiast for internal improvements, we have ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the book—that which Mr. Merrick calls "The Tragedy of a Comic Song"—is in my view the funniest story of this century: but I don't ask or expect the Magazine Enthusiast to share this view or to endorse that judgment. "The Tragedy of a Comic Song" is essentially one of those productions in which the reader is expected to collaborate. The author has deliberately contrived certain voids of narrative; and his reader is expected to populate these anecdotal ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... Episcopalian kicks, but I never succeeded in getting a Quaker kick before." Could the fanaticism of the collectors of worthless rarities be more admirably caricatured than thus unconsciously by our passive enthusiast? ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... an enthusiast!" he said—"And you could not have better teachers than the Elizabethans. They lived in a great age and they were great men. Our times, though crowded with the splendid discoveries of science, seem small and poor compared to theirs. If you ever come to me, I can ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... my purpose to study art while in Europe. Mr. Harris was in sympathy with me in this. He was as much of an enthusiast in art as I was, and not less anxious to learn to paint. I desired to learn the German language; so ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... beauty, and of the grandeur and interest of the scene of Rob Roy's seclusion, thousands can now form an estimate. Dr. Johnson was no enthusiast when he thus coldly and briefly adverted to the characteristics of Loch Lomond. "Had Loch Lomond been in a happier climate, it would have been the boast of wealth and vanity to own one of the little spots which it incloses, and to ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... advance, and a comparison of any dozen or score of the favourite sorts of Peas or Beans grown to-day with the same number of favourites of half or even a quarter of a century since will at once prove that progress in horticulture is no dream of the enthusiast. ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... religious faith, and felt free to think and act from my own convictions." Having joined the church in extreme youth, and being morbidly conscientious, she suffered constant torment about her own sins, and those of her neighbors. She was a religious enthusiast, and in time of revivals was one of the bright and shining lights in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... exceptional beauty, both of form and feature, a fluent speaker and a fearless enthusiast in her devotion to her art. She would allow herself to be repeatedly bitten by rattle-snakes and received no harm excepting the ordinary pain of the wound. After years of investigation I have come to the belief that ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... 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 arts, and of foretelling events by his knowledge of astrology. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Ohio, a distance of nearly six hundred miles. During this lonely and venturous journey he experienced relaxation in the composition of a poem, which afterwards appeared under the title of "The Pilgrim." In 1813, after encountering numerous hardships and perils, which an enthusiast only could have endured, he completed the publication of the seventh volume of his great work. But the sedulous attention requisite in the preparation of the plates of the eighth volume, and the effect of a severe cold, caught in rashly throwing himself ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Islington. Mr. Corsan, with a great deal of enthusiasm broadcasted my Carpathians all over the American continent, but under different names: English Walnuts, Persian, Russian, Carpathian, etc. Soon we were joined by a third walnut enthusiast Mr. L. K. Davitt, a teacher in a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... James Hartley, brother of the Marquis of Langdale. He had been educated at Harrow and Cambridge; and, after leaving the university, had gone out to Egypt with a friend of his father's, who was an enthusiast in the exploration of the antiquities of that country. Gregory had originally intended to stay there a few months, at most, but he was infected by the enthusiasm of his companion, and remained in Egypt for two years; when the professor was taken ill and died, ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... Dee, our 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, and the wisest of human kind, had found out how little he knew; had perceived ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Skoropikin today," Paklin was the first to begin. "Our great national critic, aesthetic, and enthusiast! What an insufferable creature! He is forever boiling and frothing over like a bottle of sour kvas. A waiter runs with it, his finger stuck in the bottle instead of a cork, a fat raisin in the neck, and when it has done ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... the light of the enthusiast springing into his fine eyes. "They're what matter, when all's said and done. If we get the children we get the world. Every generation has in it the millennium, the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... grouped at the entrance, leading from the library to the conservatory. They had certainly not escaped the notice of the lawyer, who possessed a hot-house of his own, and who was an enthusiast in botany. It now occurred to him—if he innocently provoked embarrassing results—that ferns might be turned to useful and harmless account as a means of introducing a change of subject. "Even when she hasn't spoken a word," thought Mr. Mool, consulting his recollections, ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... 'swam into their ken' in the rivers of Queensland. To be sure, in size and shape this 'extinct fish,' still living and grunting quietly in our midst, is comparatively insignificant beside the 'dragons of the prime' immortalised in a famous stanza by Tennyson: but, to the true enthusiast, size is nothing; and the barramunda is just as much a marvel and a monster as the Atlantosaurus himself would have been if he had suddenly walked upon the stage of time, dragging fifty feet of lizard-like tail in a train behind him. And this is the plain ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... 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; The sweet enthusiast, from the 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 raised a mortal to the skies; ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... reply. He gazed with a significant smile at the lovely enthusiast, until she blushed again, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... not love; and now nothing but himself remained to her. Seeing the matter in this light, Dick was dumb before Morewood's challenge to him to say, if he dared, that he hoped a long life for Alexander Quisante. Yet neither would he wish his death; for Dick had been an enthusiast, the spell had been very strong on him, and there still hung about him something of that inability to think of Quisante as dead or dying, something of the idea that he must live and must by very strength ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... a smart slap on the mouth, Bunny's metaphorical way of showing that the secret of the young enthusiast who had come, as he believed, to fight for and rescue a lost cause, was within that casket and he had ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... too much to interrupt the young enthusiast, and so he let her run on until she ran down. He was more used to the rules of evidence than she was, and could not accept her positive conclusion so readily as she would have liked to have him. He knew that beginners are very apt to make what they think are discoveries. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... They all ran home and hid, or else walked about and tried to ignore it. But at this point the grown-up people began to be interested; the mothers came to their doors to see what was the matter. Yet even the mothers were powerless in a case like that, and the enthusiast had to be left to his fate. He was found under a barn at last, breathless, almost lifeless, and he tried to bite the man who untied the can from his tail. Eventually he got well again, and lived to be a solemn warning ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... old dreams!" said Elizabeth, shaking her head and letting Razumovsky's long locks glide through her fingers. "Pay no attention to him, Alexis, he is an enthusiast who dreams of imperial crowns, while I desire nothing but a ball-dress, that in it I ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... own, I shall do as I 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
... retrospective journey through Europe and linger among these obscurer weavers would be delectable pastime for the leisurely, and for the enthusiast. But we are all more or less in a hurry, and incline toward a courier who will point out the important spots without having to hunt for them. Artois had not only Arras; Flanders had not only Brussels; France had not only the State ateliers of Paris and Beauvais; ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... most joy and thankfulness to hours passed in gazing upon the faded and faint touches of feeble hands, and listening through the stillness of uninvaded cloisters for fall of voices now almost spent; yet he is never contracted into the bigot, nor inflamed into the enthusiast; he never loses his memory of the outside world, never quits nor compromises his severe and reflective Protestantism, never gives ground of offense by despite or forgetfulness of any order of merit or period of effort. And the tone of his address to our present schools is therefore neither ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... religious hopes which had released the mind of the sublime enthusiast from the terrors of death had not rendered his speculations on human life more cheerful. This is an inconsistency which may often be observed in men of a similar temperament. He hoped for happiness beyond the grave: but he felt none ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... purpose of increasing her romantic inclinations. The heroines of Byron and Lamartine were enviously looked upon by Clary—the "Sorrows of Werther" were continually lying upon her desk ready for perusal, and the young enthusiast was soon convinced that there was no nicer death than ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... been a spy and an informer from his boyhood. Megy and Assy were under sentence for murder. Jourde was a medical student, one of the best men in the Commune, and faithful to his trust as its finance minister. Flourens, the scientist, a genuine enthusiast, we have seen was killed in the first skirmish with the Versaillais. Felix Pyat was an arch conspirator, but a very spirited and agreeable writer. He was elected in 1888 a deputy under the Government of the Third Republic. Lullier had been a naval officer, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... Salvation Army with her protegee (religion had all the attraction of the impliedly forbidden to the Madigans), and was discovered by Francis Madigan one evening on C Street, putting up a fluent prayer in a nasal tremolo—an excellent imitation of the semi-hysterical falsetto of the bonneted enthusiast ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... student of the springs of great popular outbursts among Eastern nations must be Cherchez les pretres. The Peter the Hermit of Afghanistan was the old Mushk-i-Alum, the fanatic Chief Moulla of Ghuznee. This aged enthusiast went to and fro among the tribes proclaiming the sacred duty of a Jehad or religious war against the unbelieving invaders, stimulating the pious passions of the followers of the Prophet by fervent appeals, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... but I wanted to exasperate him. I have an innate passion for contradiction—my whole life has been nothing but a series of melancholy and vain contradictions of heart or reason. The presence of an enthusiast chills me with a twelfth-night cold, and I believe that constant association with a person of a flaccid and phlegmatic temperament would have turned me into an impassioned visionary. I confess, too, that an unpleasant but familiar sensation ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... then carried into a garden made to represent the paradise of Mahomet, with flowers of great beauty and fragrance, fruits of delicious flavor, and beautiful houries beckoning him into the shades. After a while, on being a second time stupified with opium, the young enthusiast was reconveyed to his apartment; and on the next day was assured by a priest, that he was designed for some great exploit, and that by obeying the commands of their prince, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... for which Mr. Gerald Drowly had been watching and waiting. The moment that the Italian enthusiast had dropped back into his seat amid a rattle of hand-clapping and rapping of forks and knives on the tables, Drowly sprang to his feet, pushed his chair well away, as for a long separation, and begged to endorse what had been so very aptly ...
— When William Came • Saki
... in fact, going through a mental crisis, such as, in other circumstances, and under fostering influences, has produced more than one small ecstatic enthusiast; the infant shining light of some Methodist conventicle; the saintly child visionary of some Catholic convent. But Madelon had no one to foster, nor to interpret for her these feverish visions, so inexplicable to herself, poor child! To the good-natured, careless, jovial American, she would ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... born at Carthage, not far from A.D. 150, that is, about fifty years after the apostles. He wrote, therefore, within a hundred years of the apostle John. But he was a man of peculiar views, extravagant in his opinions, an enthusiast in everything. He proves that the practice of infant baptism was established, by arguing against the expediency of baptizing children, and unmarried persons, lest they should sin after baptism. His argument, with respect to both these ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... the philosophers with all their outward show; how petty they are in comparison! Can a book at once so grand and so simple be the work of men? Is it possible that he whose history is contained in this book is no more than man? Is the tone of this book, the tone of the enthusiast or the ambitious sectary? What gentleness and purity in his actions, what a touching grace in his teaching, how lofty are his sayings, how profoundly wise are his sermons, how ready, how discriminating, and how just are his answers! ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... I was by fatigue, and still more by the sights and scenes through which I had just passed, this intelligence was a severe blow. The fate of a young enthusiast, and a foreigner, whom I had known but so lately, and of whom I knew so little, might not have justified much personal sacrifice. But the thought of the heart that would be broken by his falling into the hands of the barbarians, who were now masters ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... 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, are we not bound to admit, with Locke, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the discoverer, the philosopher, the lover, the patriot—the true enthusiast for any form of life—can only achieve the full reality to which his special art or passion gives access by innumerable renunciations. He must kill out the smaller centres of interest, in order that his whole will, love, ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... trail, he continued his course of bitter hardship in the Washoe Valley. From a patch of barren sun-baked rock and earth, three miles long and a third of a mile wide, high up on the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, he beheld more millions taken out than the wildest enthusiast had ever before ventured to dream of. But Peter Bines was a luckless unit of the majority that had perforce to live on the hope produced by others' findings. The time for his strike ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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
... explorer, with a body and a will of such strength that present defeat only spurred him on. But where was there a woman to match him, to add to his courage and resolve! Perhaps men did not need such women. Destournier was not an enthusiast in religious matters. He had been here long enough to understand the hold their almost childish superstitions had on the Indians, their dull and brutish lack of any high motive, their brutal and barbarous customs. They were ready to be baptized a dozen times ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Retreat the morning after his meeting with Morewood, feeling, he confessed to himself, as if he had taken a somewhat unfair advantage of its hospitality. The result of his sojourn there, if known to the Founder, might have been a trial of that enthusiast's consistency to his principles, and Stafford was glad to be allowed to depart, as he had come, unquestioned. He came straight to London, and turned at once to the task of finding Claudia as soon as he could. The most likely quarter for information was, he thought, Eugene Lane ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... tells us, he bent his mind to learning, the subject of his studies being history and poetry, the ceremonies and the music of the empire. He early arrived at the views he always afterwards held as to the proper way to govern a people, and he believed with all the faith of an enthusiast that a vast improvement of society would follow the adoption of his method. It was to public employment that he aspired from an early period of life; but he did not readily find it in the unquiet times in which ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... depths so countless. What aspect of the great chameleon city should one select? for, as Boswell, with more than his usual sense, once remarked, "London is to the politician merely a seat of government, to the grazier a cattle market, to the merchant a huge exchange, to the dramatic enthusiast a congeries of theatres, to the man of pleasure an assemblage of taverns." If we follow one path alone, we must neglect other roads equally important; let us, then, consider the metropolis as a whole, for, as Johnson's friend well says, "the intellectual man is struck with London as comprehending ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 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 Charles ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the party, marshaled by the enthusiast, prepared for its descent on the Marlboro. Afterward, the royalties having departed and a good-natured porter giving him leave, he was at liberty to examine the wheeled palace at near-hand, and even to climb into the vestibule for ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... to all mankind, 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 replete with luxury, he finds the incitamentum, or first cause ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... not an enthusiast in favour of England, and I now know sufficient of that country to tell you that if its constitution is the best known, the application of this constitution is the worst possible; and that if the Englishman is as a social man the most ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... errors, and the ruthlessness with which in the name of liberty and reform he marched to the attainment of his object, without respect for the most sacred things, he is generally allowed to be a man of integrity, and even by his enemies, an enthusiast, who deceives himself as much as others. Now in the hopes of obtaining some uncertain and visionary good, and even while declaring his horror of civil war and bloodshed, he has risen in rebellion against ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... that nothing but Truth itself is being revealed to her, and it seems that her heart will burst for joy. This may seem extravagant, but it is just what she said, and after all, you are used to enthusiasm since your wife is an enthusiast. ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... Oriental antiquities, and his knowledge of the subject justified his interest. Often when he spent the evening with us he would ask permission to go down into the museum and have an opportunity of privately inspecting the various specimens. You can imagine that I, as an enthusiast, was in sympathy with such a request, and that I felt no surprise at the constancy of his visits. After his actual engagement to Elise, there was hardly an evening which he did not pass with us, and an hour or two were generally devoted to the museum. He had the free run ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... none which has been produced in any wise forced or strained, while thousands have, for brevity, been omitted; after so candid a discussion in all respects; what slave so passive, what bigot so blind, what enthusiast so headlong, what politician so hardened, as to stand up in defence of a system calculated for a curse to mankind? a curse under which they smart and groan to this hour, without thoroughly knowing the nature ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in the second stanza, is intended, no doubt, Henry Barrow, the Nonconformist enthusiast who was executed at Tyburn in 1592. A follower of Robert Browne, founder of the Brownists, whence sprang the sect of Independents, he brought upon himself, by his zeal and imprudence, a vengeance which his wary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Miller, who had nothing on earth to do with us, was in the chair during part of the proceedings; and that the most successful paper was by a strange gentleman whom we had taken on trust as a Socialist, but who turned out to be an enthusiast on the subject of building more harbours. I find, however, on looking up the facts, that no less than fifty-three societies sent delegates; that the guarantee fund for expenses was L100; and that the discussions were kept ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... around." But Dean's ears 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 black-tail deer, chasing buffalo, he lived a life that hardened ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... Pachmann was born at Odessa, Russia, July 27, 1848. His first teacher was his father, who was a musical enthusiast and a fine performer upon the violin. The elder de Pachmann was a Professor of Law at the University of Vienna and at first did not desire to have his son become anything more than a cultured amateur. In his youth de Pachmann was largely self taught and aside from hearing great ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... of the Manager of the Piggeries was a particularly charming little person with red hair and animated blue eyes. Lincoln left him awhile to converse with her, and she displayed herself as quite an enthusiast for the "dear old days," as she called them, that had seen the beginning of his trance. As she talked she smiled, and her eyes smiled in a manner that ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... Maisonneuve and his followers embarked. They had gained an unexpected recruit during the winter, in the person of Madame de la Peltrie. The piety, the novelty, and the romance of their enterprise, all had their charms for the fair enthusiast; and an irresistible impulse—imputed by a slandering historian to the levity of her sex [ La Tour, Mmoire de Laval, Liv. VIII. ]—urged her to share their fortunes. Her zeal was more admired by the Montrealists whom she joined than by the Ursulines whom she abandoned. ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... this would be desirable. The responsibility for the course rests naturally upon the individual instructors of these small sections. These men also share in the demonstration work, since each is usually an enthusiast in some particular field and will make a great effort in his own specialty to give a successful popular presentation of the important ideas involved. The enthusiasm which this plan has engendered is very great. Attendance is crowded and there is always a row of visitors, teachers of the ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... fatness thereof they should, would, and must be maintained. Other sources of profit there were, according to this rev. gentleman, absolutely none. The land belonged to the people "on payment of a just rent" to the landlords. "Down wid 'em!" yelled an enthusiast, who was instantly suppressed. And the people had a right to live, not like the beasts of the field, but like decent ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... "It may be expected that I should balance his faults and his virtues, that I should decide whether the title of enthusiast or impostor more properly belongs to that extraordinary man.... At the distance of twelve centuries, I darkly contemplate his shade through a cloud ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... the more generally admired hue. Occasionally, the white ones have red eyes, like those of the ferret and the white rabbit. Their flesh, although eatable, is decidedly unfit for food; they have been tasted, however, we presume by some enthusiast eager to advance the cause of science, or by some eccentric epicure in search of a new pleasure for his palate. Unless it has been that they deter rats from intruding within the rabbit-hutch, they are as useless as they are harmless. The usual ornament of an animal's hind quarters ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the 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
... enthusiasm, he was both too ignorant 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
... Lovers of the heroic in history will be grateful to Miss Gardner for her account of this noble enthusiast." (Rest of review, of more than a column, analysing the matter ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and 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 ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... net is drawn—and then it is too late. So it is with you, and so it is,' he added, falling into the ecstatic mood which marked him at times, and left me in doubt whether he were all knave or in part enthusiast, 'with all those who set themselves against St. Peter and ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... I believe to have been an honest enthusiast, set himself up as second sponsor to the Bond and voiced the doctrine of this gang: "Africa for the Africanders. Sweep the English into the sea." With an alluring cry like this, it will be readily understood how easy it was to inflame the imagination of the ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... But the thought now flashed on him that it might become a reality. He decided to pay a short visit to England, which was useful, because it dispelled illusions, always dangerous in politics. In the damp air of the Thames, Lord Clarendon seemed no longer the same enthusiast, and Lord Palmerston pleaded the excuse of a domestic affliction for seeing very little of Cavour. The Queen was kind as ever, but the momentary hope conceived in Paris vanished. One after-consequence of this visit was Lord Lyndhurst's motion, which nearly caused an ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... indefensible line of argument adopted at the end of p. 28. I am also conscious that the title of the book is, strictly speaking, inaccurate. It is a legal metaphor, and, speaking legally, a defendant is not an enthusiast for the character of King John or the domestic virtues of the prairie-dog. He is one who defends himself, a thing which the present writer, however poisoned his mind may be with paradox, certainly never dreamed ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... meantime, the subject had attracted considerable interest in Germany, and in 1812 Wolfart was sent to Mesmer at Frauenfeld by the Prussian government to investigate Mesmerism. He became an enthusiast, and introduced its practice into the hospital ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... ventures as we are now regarding that fortune seems readiest to favour the daring, and if I may digress briefly to adduce experiences coming within my own knowledge, I would say that it is to his very impulsiveness that the enthusiast often owes the safety of his neck. It is the timid, not the bold rider, that comes to grief at the fence. It is the man who draws back who is knocked over by a tramcar. Sheer impetus, moral or physical, often ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... impertinent drawl of his voice, a hint of half-bored condescension in his manner, convinced me that he was shy and affected. In a breath I appraised him as intellectual, a fool, a shallow mind, a deep schemer, an idler, and an enthusiast. One result of his spasmodic confidences was to throw a doubt upon their accuracy. This might be what he desired; or with equal probability it might be the chance reflection of a childish and ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... us means well, but forgets it is not the only thing there. A man I knew was an enthusiast on vegetarianism. He argued that if the poor would adopt a vegetarian diet the problem of existence would be simpler for them, and maybe he was right. So one day he assembled some twenty poor lads for the purpose of introducing to them a vegetarian ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... for them. The usual product of experience, and more especially experience gained in attempting some great reform, is, as Dr. Martineau remarks, "a certain caution and lowering of hope. When the spent enthusiast looks back upon the riches of his early hopes, and the poverty of his achievements, he is tempted to regret the magnitude of his aims, and advise a zeal too temperate to live through the frosts ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... Florence. Finding that the nobility still hesitated at the idea of uncompromising hostility to the house of Lorraine, he allied himself more firmly with the popular party, and found an able lieutenant in the baker Giuseppe Dolfi (1818-1869), an honest and whole-hearted enthusiast who had great influence with the common people. As soon as war between Piedmont and Austria appeared imminent, Bartolommei organized the expedition of Tuscan volunteers to join the Piedmontese army, spending large sums out of his own pocket for the purpose, and was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... 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 ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... property acquired by dishonesty cannot prosper." But I shall leave the philosopher and the enthusiast to settle that important point, while I go on to observe, That that the lordship of Birmingham did not prosper with the Duke. Though he had, in some degree, the powers of government in his hands, he had also the clamours of the people in his ears. What were ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... should probably never have heard his name had he done otherwise). Not that the life was so quiet as it might have been. He could not keep his satire impersonal enough to avoid incurring enmities. He boasts in the Peregrine of the unfeeling way in which he commented on that enthusiast to his followers, and we may believe his assurance that his writings brought general dislike and danger upon him. His moralizing (of which we are happy to say there is a great deal) is based on Tiresias's pronouncement. Moralizing has ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... maid, too ready to admire, Though false its notes, the pale enthusiast's lyre; If this be genius, though its bitter springs Glowed like the morn beneath Aurora's wings, Seek not the source whose sullen bosom feeds But fruitless flowers and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... flesh. A sort of arm raised him up in the air, As though to fly out of a mesh— His tail was spread out like a fan." Now it was a cock of which our little mouse, Made to his mother this fine picture, Describing him like an enthusiast. "He beat," said he, "his flanks, With his two arms, Making such a noise and such a din, That, frightened half to death, I hurried in. Although I pique myself upon my courage And heartily I cursed him in my heart, For but for him, I'd taken part, In conversation with the gentle creature, Who my advances ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... City man," he would continue, "say the Lord Mayor; add to him a poet, say Swinburne; mix them with a religious enthusiast, say General Booth. There you will have the man ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... and not half so funny, unless very carefully modelled to caricature the manners and customs of the human subject. Pourtrayed as shoemakers, acrobats, as "You dirty boy!" or, as in the Fisheries Exhibition of 1883, as "The Enthusiast" (a gouty monkey fishing in a tub placed in his sick chamber), they are, perhaps, the most successful. The addition of miniature furniture to assist the delusion is permissible; but, after all, these caricatures are not ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... nearly all bad 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
... themselves, the former near Klipfontein, north of it, and the latter near Florida, west of it. The right and the most vulnerable part of the Boer line was posted on Doornkop near the scene of the surrender of Jameson, the enthusiast, who, a few years before, had endeavoured with a few hundred adventurers and soldiers of fortune to solve the South African question which Great Britain was now tackling with a quarter of a million ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... 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 ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... are we going to do with this child, Sister Angelique?" interrupted Sister Agnes, and abruptly shutting off the religious enthusiast. "She must ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... summer, one of our bishops, administering a northern diocese, spoke of these circumstances to a devout Catholic friend, and said he thought it possible that the precaution taken by the monks at Newstead might also have been taken by the monks at Vange. The friend, I should tell you, was an enthusiast. Saying nothing to the bishop (whose position and responsibilities he was bound to respect), he took into his confidence persons whom he could trust. One night—in the absence of the present proprietor, or, I should rather say, the present usurper, of the estate—the lake at Vange was privately dragged, ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... Orb not of France alone, pale symbol of my soul, its dearest hopes, The struggle and the daring, rage divine for liberty, Of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthusiast's dreams of brotherhood, Of terror to the ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... mutinous, and, in the case of the bark Swallow, a piratical set. The mechanics were little better. The gentlemen-adventurers, puffed up with vain hopes of finding a new Mexico, became soon disappointed and surly at the hard practical reality; while over all was the head of a sage and an enthusiast, a man too noble to suspect others, and too pure to make allowances for poor dirty human weaknesses. He had got his scheme perfect upon paper; well for him, and for his company, if he had asked Francis Drake to translate it for him into fact! As early as ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... than anywhere else; it has not been proved, but I do not much doubt, that most of them were given by the chapter to Cambridge about 1574, at the suggestion of Dr. Andrew Perne, Master of Peterhouse, who was a member of the cathedral body and an enthusiast for ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... conciliated, fears to be quelled, and safety to be observed in all our operations. And we protest, most solemnly protest, against the adoption of your views, as alike destructive of the ends of justice, of policy, and of humanity. No wild dream of the wildest enthusiast was ever more extravagant than that of turning loose upon society two millions of blacks, idle and therefore worthless, vicious and therefore dangerous, ignorant and therefore incapable of appreciating and enjoying the blessings ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... was a great favorite with students. He was a man of very lively temperament, fond of old books and young people, open-hearted, free-spoken, an enthusiast in teaching, and especially at home in that apartment of the temple of science where nature is seen in undress, the anthropotomic laboratory, known to common speech as the dissecting-room. He had that quality which is the special gift of the man born for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... you. Let me have a word of hope! Though divorce is not allowed in this country, death befalls any man, for while your statisticians figure out that the married live longest, they do not assert that they are immortal. Clemenceau dead, his widow may remarry. You say he is an enthusiast—one of those college-growths which run to seed without any fruit. I thought the contrary from the way he rode my horse and handled the pistols. But, being an enthusiast, how can you expect to ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas |
