"Fanatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... persuade himself that the visions which appeared before him in these fits and transports of the mind, were the genuine inspirations of the Deity." This is evidently Dr. Parker's explanation of the attendant demon, and he ends by declaring that Cardan was rather fanatic than infidel. ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... a few years ago, to represent the Abolitionist as the dupe or agent of the aristocracies of Europe. It certainly might be supposed that persons who made this foolish charge were competent at least to see that the present enemy of the unity of the American people is the pro-slavery fanatic, and that it is on his knavery or stupidity that the ill-wishers to American unity now ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... a great ally of mine. She was never a tower of strength to me, but at least she was always a lodge in my garden of cucumbers. She was a very well-meaning pious lady, but she was not a fanatic, and her mind did not naturally revel in spiritual aspirations. Almost her only social fault was that she was sometimes a little fretful; this was the way in which her bruised individuality asserted itself. But she was affectionate, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... yellowing title-deeds, and a list of the "muniments" of the castle, made by William Prynne, who was sent there as a prisoner by Cromwell in 1650, after having suffered branding and the loss of his ears at Royalist hands for his "seditious teachings," and who, firebrand and fanatic as he was, beguiled his imprisonment ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... zeal. Imprisonment, banishment, and even death itself, were inflicted for that free exercise of religious opinions which the Pilgrim fathers had sacrificed all earthly interests to win for themselves. In those dark days of fanatic faith or vicious skepticism, the softening influence of true Christianity was but little felt. The stern denunciations and terrible punishments of the Old Testament were more suited to the iron temper of the age than the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... clad now in a nameless, formless garment which she had discovered in a closet, her own modish belongings safely rolled up in a sheet, had covered her head with a towel turban and incased her feet in an old pair of shoes. Thus equipped, she fell upon the task of regeneration with fanatic zeal. She became grimy; a smear of soot disfigured her face; her skirt dragged, her shoe-tops flopped, and the heels clattered; but she was ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... into my clothes, I made my way softly to the spot. There in the seat where I was wont to pursue my even tenor as an orchid slumbered Martin Dyke, amateur desecrator of other men's houses, challenger of the wayward fates, fanatic of a will-o'-the-wisp pursuit, desperate adventurer in the uncharted realms of love; and in his face, turned toward the polychromatic abominations of the house, so soon to be deserted, was all the pathos and all the beauty ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... ye, Our Muses, with a hundred tongues, And Thou, O Henley! blest with brazen lungs; Fanatic Withers! fam'd for rhimes and sighs, And Jacob Behmen! most obscurely wise; From darkness palpable, on dusky wings Ascend! and shroud him who ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... part of merchants and artisans who weren't able or willing to adapt themselves to changing conditions; they're all backing Rakkeed and yelling 'Znidd suddabit!' now. You know, it's a shame that geek messiah isn't a smart crook, instead of an honest fanatic; he could take in the equivalent of a couple of million sols a year off the North Uller merchants and the Equatorial Zone shipowners. But it is a fact, which not even Rakkeed can successfully deny, that we've raised the general living standard of this ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... room alone to cry her eyes out, and you and your husband pocket the money? Many of us at the North, dear madam, if you will take my unworthy self as a specimen, and I am a very moderate anti-slavery man and no fanatic, are quite as ready to believe such things of you as the contrary. We ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... a world where it was deemed an offence to torture, strangle, burn, and drown one's innocent fellow-creatures. The usual but trifling excuse for such enormities can not be pleaded for the Emperor. Charles was no fanatic. The man whose armies sacked Rome, who laid his sacrilegious hands on Christ's vicegerent, and kept the infallible head of the Church a prisoner to serve his own political ends, was then no bigot. He believed in nothing; save that when the course of his imperial will was impeded, and the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fanatic himself, thought the customer, but a very entertaining one. "Well, sir," he said, "I am ever so grateful to you. I'll come again. Good-night." And he started down ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... Who, like ill guardians, lived themselves at large, And, not content with that, debauch'd their charge. Like some brave captain, your successful pen Restores the exiled to her crown again: 50 And gives us hope, that having seen the days When nothing flourish'd but fanatic bays, All will at length in this opinion rest,— "A sober prince's government is best." This is not all: your art the way has found To make the improvement of the richest ground; That soil which those immortal laurels bore, That ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... twenty recruits with gigantic home-made bowie-knives, to be swung with the two hands, like the machetes of the Isthmus. It was a grisly spectacle to see that earnest band practising their murderous cuts and slashes under the eye of that remorseless old fanatic. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... With an indignation heated by the works of modern philosophers into an enthusiastic love of republican governments, and irritated by the contempt and opposition he has met with from those of this own class who entertain different principles, he is now become almost a fanatic. What at first was only a political opinion is now a religious tenet; and the moderate sectary has acquired the obstinacy of a martyr, and, perhaps, the spirit of persecution. At the beginning of the revolution, the necessity of deciding, a youthful ardour for liberty, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... he doesn't want to go into the government service; he's weakly, as you see, in health; fie upon him, the milksop! And all this because he's got his head full of Voltaire." The old man had a special dislike to Voltaire, and the "fanatic" Diderot, though he had not read a word of their words; reading was not in his line. Piotr Andreitch was not mistaken; his son's head for that matter was indeed full of both Diderot and Voltaire, and not only of them alone, of Rousseau too, and Helvetius, and many other ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... denounced him in chapel next Sunday as a German Rationalist, who impiously pretended to explain away the Lord's visitation into a carnal matter of drains, and pipes, and gases, and such like; and that his rival of another denomination, who was a fanatic on the teetotal question, denounced him as bitterly for supporting the cause of drunkenness, by attributing cholera to want of cleanliness, while all rational people knew that its true source was intemperance. Poor Frank! he had preached against drunkenness many a ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... exclaimed to his wife as soon as they were seated in their carriage, "Dr. Fairfax is a narrow-minded extremist, a fanatic. What right had he to bring those street wanderers into the church this morning? The place for them is down at the mission. Do I not give liberally toward its support? To be sure, such as they need the Gospel, but I want them to stay where they ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... luxurious castles, cathedrals, convents, villas and estates; there you will find the most desolate huts of the moujiks and lonely hermit caves in the wilds of Siberia. Here you will meet the most selfish chinovnik, the most fanatic desperado or reckless bureaucrat; there you face the noblest men and women, supermen, physically and mentally. You will find that all Russian life is full of such ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... MAKERS.—Now should any member of the legislature rise up and testify against this "earthly hell," and speak in defence of the moral manhood and womanhood of the nation, he would be greeted as a fanatic, and laughed down amid derisive cheers; such has been the experience again and again. Therefore attack this great stronghold which for the past thirty years has warred and is warring against our social manhood and womanhood, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... William's dislike of the Cathedral service is sarcastically noticed by Leslie in the Rehearsal, No. 7. See also a Letter from a Member of the House of Commons to his Friend in the Country, 1689, and Bisset's Modern Fanatic, 1710.] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his spiritual battles. His manners were quiet, and would not have been disagreeable, but for an air of uncomfortably stiff solemnity, which draped him from head to foot like a robe of moral oilcloth, and might almost be said to rustle audibly. Whether he was a practical joker, a swindler, a fanatic, or a madman, my spiritual vision was not keen enough to discover at first sight. Beside him and ourselves the party consisted of a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick-maker, all members of the Doctor's church and indefatigable workers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... yours could hinder my destiny!' He was the blustering savage again, and I preferred him in the part. All that he said might be true, but I thought I could detect in his voice a keen regret, and in his air a touch of disquiet. The man was a fanatic, and like all fanatics ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... would be in grave danger of death within three years, and then, turning to a horoscope of my own which he had insisted upon drawing, he ran his yellow finger down to a point and raising his mild, fanatic eyes to mine, remarked that at precisely that time it was written that I should save life! At which I smiled politely and said that I hoped I should save Margarita's and he replied politely that as to that ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... woman, who would place the knife of Jacques Clement or of Ravaillac in the hands of a fanatic, would save France." ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Mohammedan's a sort of eastern fanatic who thinks he'll get a 'corner lot' in Paradise if he reads the Koran and dies on the edge of your bayonets. Mecca is his holy shrine, and the old Sultan acts as a sort of elder or high priest who takes up the collections. ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... deliberately encouraged his troops to live devoutly, instead of being deemed by them on that account unsoldierly or fanatic, secured such a place in their confidence and affection as few even of the most magnetic leaders among men ever managed to obtain. The pet name by which they always spoke of him implied no approach to unseemly familiarity, but ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... the High Priestess, her heart a seething, molten mass of hatred for Tarzan of the Apes. The zeal of the religious fanatic whose altar has been desecrated was triply enhanced by the rage of a woman scorned. Twice had she thrown her heart at the feet of the godlike ape-man and twice had she been repulsed. La knew that she was beautiful—and she was beautiful, not by the standards of prehistoric ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... nice, To call such trifles by the name of vice; Hinting, though gently and with cautious speech, Of good example—'tis their trade to preach. But still 'twas pity, when the worthy 'squire Stuck to the church, what more could they require? 'Twas almost joining that fanatic crew, To throw such morals at his honour's pew; A weaker man, had he been so reviled, Had left the place—he only swore and smiled. "But think, ye rectors and ye curates, think, Who are your friends, and at their frailties wink; Conceive not—mounted on your Sunday-throne, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... was attained at a cost almost too great. Brother Friedsam was a fanatic, and he was also an artist. He obliged the brethren and sisters to submit to the most rigorous training. In this, as in religion, he subordinated them to his ideals. He would fain tune their very souls to his own key; and ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... of its sinister aspect by old age and suffering, was ghastly in color, matching the long meshes of white hair which fell around his bald head, the yellow skull of which seemed softening. The warrior and the fanatic still shone in those yellow eyes, tempered now by religious sentiment. Devotion had cast a monastic tone upon the face, formerly so hard, but now marked with tints which softened its expression. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... overthrow of Manasseh's successor, Amon, signs of a dawn appeared. The child of eight years who was heir to the throne was secured, perhaps through his mother's influence, by a party in Court and Temple that had kept loyal to the higher faith; and the people, probably weary of the fanatic extravagance of Manasseh, were content ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... and sad; it was plain that he expected attack and equally plain that he would meet it with fanatic serenity. And yet, the magnificent blunderer presented so fine an aspect of the tortured Olympian, he confronted us with so vast a dignity—the driven snow of his hair tousled upon his head and shoulders, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... turned and frightened each of them off like a dog with his tail between his legs. Don't give yourself confidence, Allen. That's all you are, that's all we are—two dogs fighting for a stolen bone. The man who rules you here is an ignorant negro, debauched and vicious and a fanatic. He is shut off from every one, even to the approach of a British ambassador. And what do you suppose he cares for a dog of a Christian like you, who has been robbed in a hotel by another Christian? And these others. Do you suppose they care? Call out—cry for help, and tell them that you ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... the founders of the school, a well-known New England manufacturer, came on his yearly pilgrimage ... a fanatic disciple of the great Moreton, he considered it his duty to see to the immediate conversion, by every form of persuasion and subtle compulsion, of every ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... whether in our times anything would justify a man in committing a homicide on an innocent person. Would he not be called a fanatic? If so, we may infer that morality—the proper conduct of men as regards one another in social relations—is better understood among us than it was among the patriarchs four thousand years ago; and hence, that as nations advance in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... upon all that had gone before. But as Isaacson lay back, having dismissed Hassan, and strove to rest, he continually saw the beautiful Hamza before him, beautiful because wonderfully typical, shrouded and drenched in the spirit of the East, a still fanatic with fatal eyes. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Martin added, "But the darned fool fanatic and idealist Captain John will go just the same because he and Private Charlie are comrades in the oneness of the Big Idea of the Mill here ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... my Lady Jean, if I'm no sair mistaken"—and Jock chuckled to himself when Kirsty had gone—"and a warning to the laird micht no be amiss. It would be fine business for a Graham o' Claverhouse to marry a Covenantin' fanatic and the daughter o' sic a mither. Dod! it would be fair ruin for his career, and misery for himsel'. I'll no deny her looks, but I'll guarantee she has her mither's temper. What would Claverhouse have done without me—though ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... course goes without saying, but he had the rarer gift of an elevated and rigid political honesty such as has been unfrequently seen in any age or any nation; in times of severe trial this quality was even cruelly tested, but we shall never see it fail; he was as courageous as if he had been a fanatic; indeed, for a long part of his life to maintain a single-handed fight in support of a despised or unpopular opinion seemed his natural function and almost exclusive calling; he was thoroughly conscientious and never knowingly did (p. 011) wrong, nor ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... three or four years ago, God separated the fanatic conchologist from the collection that was his life. They found the aged man seated before his cabinet, opposite to his unique spiral. He had died alone, with his eyes fixed upon that which had possessed his affections during so many years. His collection ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. "We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... every way articulate character, is in itself perhaps small compared with our great chaotic inarticulate Cromwell's. Instead of 'dumb prophet struggling to speak,' we have a portentious mixture of the Quack! Hume's notion of the Fanatic-Hypocrite, with such truth as it has, will apply much better to Napoleon than it did to Cromwell, to Mahomet or the like, where indeed, taken strictly, it has hardly any truth at all. An element of blameable ambition shows itself from the first ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... in the novel is the history of the grasp that this barbarous fanatic has laid upon the fastidious and high-tempered Zenobia, who, disliking him and shrinking, from him at a hundred points, is drawn into the gulf of his omnivorous egotism. The portion of the story that strikes ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... Several of the women are agreeable, and some of the men; but the latter are in general vain and ignorant. The savans—I beg their pardon, the philosophes—are insupportable, superficial, overbearing, and fanatic.' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... been a tremendous national flare-up, when in a great public place on the West Side known as the Haymarket, at one of a number of labor meetings, dubbed anarchistic because of the principles of some of the speakers, a bomb had been hurled by some excited fanatic, which had exploded and maimed or killed a number of policemen, injuring slightly several others. This had brought to the fore, once and for all, as by a flash of lightning, the whole problem of mass against class, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... out with that so soon!" Miss Ambient exclaimed, in answer to this piece of gossip. "Poor lady, she saw that I am a fanatic." "Yes, she won't like you for that. But you must n't mind, if the rest of us like you! Beatrice thinks a work of art ought to have a 'purpose.' But she's a charming woman—don't you think her charming?—she's such a type of ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... the few reformers who have not in some measure mixed their love of man with hate of men; his quarrel was with error, and not with the persons who were in it. He was so gently steadfast in his opinions that no one ever thought of him as a fanatic, though many who held his opinions were assailed as fanatics, and suffered the shame if they did not win the palm of martyrdom. In early life he was a communist, and then when he came out of Brook Farm ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... anyone but a Landsmaal fanatic it seems ridiculous to have Theseus tell Hermia: "Demetrius er so gild ein kar som nokon." "Demetrius is a worthy gentleman," says Shakespeare and this has "the grand Manner." But to a cultivated Norwegian the translation is "Bauernsprache," ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... looked into his were as wild as those of the man driven with fever. The face of the Venezuelan was jubilant, exalted, like that of a worshipping fanatic. ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... leave us alone. Up to that time, I used to think it was very stupid to collect match-boxes; but when I found that there were risks of losing liberty, and perhaps even life, by doing it, I began to feel a taste for it. Now I am an absolute fanatic on the subject. We are going to Sweden next summer to complete our ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... the two finest Scholars of this Age, Dr. Bentley and Bishop Hare, for squabbling, as he expressed it, about an old Play-book; meaning, I suppose, Terence's Comedies. But this Story is unworthy of him; tho' well enough suiting the fanatic turn of the wild Writer that relates it; such censures are amongst the follies of men immoderately given over to one Science, and ignorantly undervaluing all the rest. Those learned Critics might, and perhaps did, laugh in their turn (tho' still, sure, with the same indecency and indiscretion) ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... passages from Petrarch (Senil. 1. v. ep. iii. et. Oper. v. ii. p. 1143) to show how strongly such sentiments prevailed in the time of that poet, by whom they were held in horror and detestation He adds, that this fanatic admirer of Aristotle translated his writings with that felicity, which might be expected from one who did not know a syllable of Greek, and who was therefore compelled to avail himself of the unfaithful Arabic versions. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... just think of the field of humanity closed to him! For sixteen hundred years, remarkable men and women had appeared, representing all classes of religious character, from the ecstasy of the saint to the gloom of the fanatic; yet his intellectual curiosity was not enough excited to explore and reproduce their experience. Do you say that the subject was foreign to the purpose of an Elizabethan playwright? The answer is, that Decker and Massinger attempted it, for a popular audience, in "The Virgin Martyr"; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... example (in September, 1904), he was reported by a Church newspaper as saying: "The Gentiles are coming among us to buy our homes and land. We should not sell to them, as they are the enemies of the Kingdom of God." He is that most perfect of all hypocrites—the fanatic who believes that he is lying in the service ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... propitiation for an imperfect past; and from a window a notorious evil-liver was frenziedly crying that she had heard the devil and his Rocbert witches revelling in the prison dungeons the night before. Thereupon a long-haired fanatic, once a barber, with a gift for mad preaching, sprang upon the Pompe des Brigands, and declaring that the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Monterey a rich man in something besides land. After that there was little conversation between himself and Polk on any subject but money and the manner of its multiplication; and, as the years passed, and Polk's prophecy was fulfilled, he gave the devotion of a fanatic to the retention of his vast inheritance and to the development of ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... cried hoarsely. "The trumpets! Didn't you hear them?" The light in his eyes was fanatic. Instinctively Valerie shrank away. Regardless, he let her go. "I forgot. Gramarye—I'm pledged to her. It's too late, Valerie. Oh, why did you come?" He buried his face in his hands. "You'll never understand," ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... question of war. I have lived a longish life and have heard our ministers preach on universal peace hardly half a dozen times. Twenty years ago, in a drawing room, I dared in the presence of forty persons to moot the proposition that war was incompatible with Christianity; I was regarded as an arrant fanatic. The idea that we could get on without war was regarded as unmitigated weakness ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... deceived his sailors as to their true distance from Spain, as evidence of a false nature. He is charged with ambition, cupidity, and arrogance, in demanding titles, dignities, and money as fruits of his discoveries. He was, we are told, a fanatic, a visionary, a tyrant, a buccaneer, a liar, and a slave-trader. He was proud, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... nearly so. The Emperor of Germany was on a yachting cruise; even the old Austrian Kaiser, though required to watch affairs because of the death of his heir, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, murdered by a Serb fanatic ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... Tyler frowned. "There are reasons for going slow with Tighe. He has hostage value, for one thing. But you're nobody. And while we aren't monsters I for one have little sympathy to spare for your kind of fanatic." ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... marvelled at the terrible muzzle velocity of the modern rifle. One bullet had gone through the chest, and tiny pin-heads of blood near the breast-bone and between the shoulders was all the trace that had been left. But the second pencil of nickel-plated lead had struck the fanatic on the forearm, and instead of boring through, had knocked out a clean wedge of flesh, half an inch thick and three inches deep, just as you would chip out a piece of wood from a plank. There was nothing unseemly in it all, death had come so suddenly. The ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... and original title, The Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Hogg's reference to it in his Autobiography is sufficiently odd. "The next year (1824)," he says, "I published The Confessions of a Fanatic [Sinner], but, it being a story replete with horrors, after I had written it I durst not venture to put my name to it, so it was published anonymously, and of course did not sell very well—so at least I believe, for I do ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... call myself a religious man,' says I, 'or a fanatic in moral bigotry, but I can't stand still and see a man who has built up his business by his own efforts and brains and risk be robbed by an unscrupulous trickster who is a menace to ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... "I am intoxicated by all this beauty and love the very air and earth. I feel the ecstasy of the aesthetic fanatic. Were I not disturbed by thoughts of you, I would indeed become another Eve before the fall, though I have strange desires and my blood beats as in the veins of married women. But no lovers can quench my fever. All the tiresome males are far away and I feel ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... The stale-grown vizor from her face doth pluck, And weareth now a suit of morris bells, With which she jingling goes through all her towns and villages. The baffled factions in their houses sculk: The common-wealthsman, and state machinist, The cropt fanatic, and fifth-monarchy-man, Who heareth of these visionaries now? They and their dreams have ended. Fools do sing, Where good men yield God thanks; but politic spirits, Who live by observation, note these changes Of the popular mind, and thereby serve their ends. Then ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... excitability is opposed to slowness and one-sidedness in thought; he is easily surprised by irrelevancies; he is torn from his drowse, and behaves like a somnolent drunkard.... The very old individual is a fanatic about rest—every disturbance of his rest troubles him. Hence, all his anger, all his teasing and quarreling, all his obstinacy and stiffness, have a single device: 'Let me ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... this with respect to the emotions of pleasurable excitement with which you left Lady M.'s ball? I am no fanatic, nor ascetic; and I can imagine it possible (though not probable) that among the visitors there some simple-minded and simple-hearted people, amused with the crowds, the dresses, the music, and the flowers, may have felt, even in this scene of ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... who ought to be brothers are divided into states, and hate each other as enemies. He said: 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in Heaven,' yet he who believes it ever will come is called a fanatic and a fool." ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... past of his first love-dream, when he worshipped at the feet of Nora Beresford, and, with the whole-heartedness of the true fanatic, clothed his idol with every imaginable attribute of virtue and tenderness. To this day there remained a secret shrine in his heart wherein the Lady of his young ideal was still enthroned, although ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... enlightenment. He admitted that the Flower of Silence was an instrument frequently employed by a certain group, adding that, according to some authorities, one who had touched the flower might escape death by immediately pronouncing the sacred name of Buddha. He was no fanatic himself, however, and, marking my incredulity, he explained that the truth ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... party started; and Brent had good-naturedly submitted. But now the engineer suddenly balked, flatly refusing to take him out again. Miss Liz arose in her wrath, but he told her that he would not risk another day of starvation should this fanatic choose to throw the lunch away—and it was too much work going every day, anyhow. But, the fact of the matter was, Dale had become a serious handicap. He was not content to act as pole-man, or carry the chain. He could have done either of these well enough, because Brent had taught two ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Although Cezanne lived like a bachelor, his surviving sister saw that his household was comfortable. His wife and son lived in Paris and often visited him. He was rich; his father, a successful banker at Aix, had left him plenty of money; but a fanatic on the subject of art, ceaselessly searching for new tonal combinations, he preferred a hermit's existence. In Aix he was considered eccentric though harmless. His pride was doubled by a morbid shyness. Strangers he avoided. So sensitive was he that once when he stumbled over a rock ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... will. It is a great tribute to French "catholicity of mind and largeness of temper" that Carpeaux's "La Danse" remains in its position on the facade of the Grand Opera. French sentiment regarding it was doubtless accurately expressed by the fanatic who tried to ink it indelibly after it was first exposed. This vandal was right from his point of view—the point of view of style. Almost the one work of absolute spontaneity among the hundreds which without and within decorate M. Garnier's edifice, it is thus a distinct jar in the ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... nodded and the green eyes flashed with the same fanatic spark that electrified American politics at the turn of the 21st century and launched the Humanist Party into ...
— The Deadly Daughters • Winston K. Marks
... Meantime Raven, bending in his search, went toward him, scrutinizing the road from side to side. He had a good idea of the fellow in the one glance he gave him: a pale, thin face, black eyes with a strange spark in them, a burning glance like the inventor's or the fanatic's, and black hair. It was an ascetic face, and yet there was passion of an unnamed sort ready to flash out and do strange things, overthrow the fabric of an ordered life perhaps, or contradict the restraint of years. He stood ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... of his arrival the young king exercised a powerful influence over the Government, and he was gradually drawing into his hands the whole direction of affairs. But, bigot as he was in matters of faith, Philip's temper was that of a statesman, not of a fanatic. If he came to England resolute to win the country to union with the Church, his conciliatory policy was already seen in the concessions he wrested from the Papacy in the matter of the Church lands, and his aim was rather to hold England together and to ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... eyes that were at times hard and direct, at times wavering and uncertain. Not only was he slender but he was also short of stature. His mouth was like the mouth of a sensitive and very determined child. Jesse Bentley was a fanatic. He was a man born out of his time and place and for this he suffered and made others suffer. Never did he succeed in getting what he wanted out of life and he did not know what he wanted. Within a very short time after he came home to the Bentley farm he made everyone ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... contemplated the strange fanatic before him, and listened to his heated rhapsody, with indescribable bewilderment. He looked him in the face with curious particularity; saw there the marks of education; and ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... like Shakespeare, like Byron, like Walter Scott, like Talleyrand, but that did not hinder his getting along in the world. But how fanatic and bloodthirsty he was! History affirms that at Delhi he massacred a hundred thousand captives, and at Bagdad he erected an obelisk of eighty ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... have you grumbled, reverend Dean, To keep our poultry sweet and clean; To sweep the mansion-house they dwell in, And cure the rank unsavoury smelling. Now enter as the dairy handmaid: Such charming butter [14] never man made. Let others with fanatic face Talk of their milk for babes of grace; From tubs their snuffling nonsense utter; Thy milk shall make us tubs of butter. The bishop with his foot may burn it,[15] But with his hand the Dean can churn it. How are the servants overjoy'd To see thy deanship thus employ'd! Instead of ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... in his hand the great standard of the Republic, and for the last time he attempted to avert with words the tempest which his deeds had called forth. But his hour had come, and as he stood there alone he was stoned and shot at, and an arrow pierced his hand. Broken in nerve by long intemperance and fanatic excitement, he burst into tears and fled, refusing the hero's death in which he might still have saved his name from scorn. He attempted to escape from the other side of the Capitol towards the Forum, and in the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... perfectly quiet and she felt wholly at ease, she would sit down, fold her hands, and give herself up to speechless meditation, an evil and fanatic dream playing over her features ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... find Claire seated beside her grandmother, and it was for that that he called. Whilst listening with an inattentive ear to the old lady's rigmaroles and her interminable anecdotes of the emigration, he gazed upon Claire, as a fanatic upon his idol. Often in his ecstasy he forgot where he was for the moment and became absolutely oblivious of the old lady's presence, although her shrill voice was piercing the tympanum of his ear like a needle. Then he would answer ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... what conclusions they form, and what hopes they entertain. Do they hear of a new friend in office? That is encouragement enough to practise the city, against the opinion of a majority into an address to the Queen for repealing the sacramental test; or issue out their orders to the next fanatic parson to furbish up his old sermons, and preach and print new ones directly against Episcopacy. I would lay a good wager, that, if the choice of a new Speaker succeeds exactly to their liking, we shall ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... of Kansas into Virginia was not an event which would have stirred the people in ordinary times. It was the wild foray of a fanatic, who tried to stir up a slave insurrection. He was captured, tried, convicted, and hanged. There were demoralized followers and duped negroes with him, when he was overcome by Colonel Robert E. Lee, with a detachment of marines, at Harper's Ferry. This affair ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... in shop windows, and the demand for the draping of the naked personifications of abstract virtues in architectural street decoration. So imperfect is still the education of the multitude that in these matters the ill-bred fanatic of pruriency usually gains his will. Such a state of things cannot but have an unwholesome reaction on the moral atmosphere of the community in which it is possible. Even from the religious point of view, prurient prudery ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to us plainly, and fully instructed us in our duty and gave the long-faced hypocrites such a lecture that much good was done. I had at that time learned to dread a religious fanatic, and I was pleased to hear the Prophet lay down the law to them. A fanatic is always dangerous, but a religious fanatic is to be dreaded by all men - there is no reason in one of them. I cannot understand how men will blindly follow fanatical teachers. I always demanded a reason for my belief, and ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... light, for a personal message, that Paul was urged by a committee, including some of the foremost thinkers of the day, to deliver a series of addresses at the Albert Hall. He had lighted a veritable bonfire, and its flames were spreading to the four points of the compass. Even Islam, that fanatic rock against which reform dashes itself in vain, was stirred at last, and the Sherif of Mecca issued a firman to the mosques within his province authorising an intensive campaign against the Koran Inglisi—for Paul ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... the owner of a mysterious volume, written with human blood, and containing receipts for medicines which enabled him, as he professed, to cure various diseases. Presently he became a Methodist, and thereupon burned this book with certain awe-inspiring formalities. He seems to have been a fanatic in religious matters, for he soon left the Methodists to form a sect of his own; and it is related that he gathered a number of Germans about him, to whom he gave himself out as a being to be worshiped, and later as one of the two witnesses in the Book of Revelation; and in this capacity ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... Leiters, twelve fanatic and devoted men, black priests, but priests with flashing rods of fire, lie detectors, rocket ships, intra-space cannon, many more things the Terran Senate could only conjecture about. The Senior Leiters and their subordinate ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick
... devout fell in fits and trances or were convulsed with strange throes called the jerks, and all sorts of superstitions grew up easily among them. The wildest of these perhaps was that of the Leatherwood God which flourished in Guernsey County, about the year 1828. The name of this fanatic or impostor, who was indeed both one and the other, was Joseph C. Dylks, and his title was given him because of his claim to be the Supreme Being, and because he first appeared to his worshipers on Leather-wood Creek at the ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... about him may go; nor did I expect ever to shrink so unutterably from any apothegm of a sage, whose happy lips have uttered a hundred golden sentences, as from that saying (perhaps falsely attributed to so honored a source), that the death of this blood-stained fanatic has 'made the Gallows as venerable as the Cross!' Nobody was ever more justly hanged. He won his martyrdom fairly, and took it firmly. He himself, I am persuaded (such was his natural integrity), would have acknowledged that Virginia had a right to take the life which he had staked and lost; although ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... like myself—a religious fanatic. He has a mission, and will fulfil it, and that mission is to Christianise!! all Mussulmans. He has forbidden the smoking of tobacco in his country, and cuts off the right hand and left foot of any man he catches ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... in hand might be, you might be sure that he started with the firm conviction that you could not possibly arrive at the journey's end. It seemed as if the one great principle of his life was that the Sons of Zeruiah must be too hard for us, and that nobody but a simpleton or a fanatic would expect anything else. 'With a manner,' he says of himself, 'which I believe suggested conceit, I had really a very low estimate of myself as compared with others. I could echo what Bishop Stanley says of himself in his journal: "My greatest obstacle to success in life ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... to the ground and foraged through the woods. Jamison carried one of Johnny Simms' guns, which he regarded with acute suspicion, and Bell carried cameras. They photographed trees and underbrush, first as atmosphere and then with fanatic attention to leaves and fruits or flowers. Bell got pictures of one of the small, furry bipeds that Cochrane and Holden had spied when Babs was with them. He got a picture of what he believed to be a spider-web—it was thicker and heavier and huger than any web on Earth—and ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Sabbath." Texts from Numbers, the Psalms, Zechariah, and the Apocalypse were dwelt upon in the pulpits to show that plagues are sent by the Almighty to punish sin; and perhaps the most ghastly figure among all those fearful scenes described by De Foe is that of the naked fanatic walking up and down the streets with a pan of fiery coals upon his head, and, after the manner of Jonah at Nineveh, proclaiming woe to the city, and its ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... sweetness of his disposition and the urbanity of his manners. His wide sympathies interested him in many causes, and even his antagonists were not enemies. Stephen, on the other hand, as Mr. Henry Adams says, was a 'high-minded fanatic.' To be interested in any but the great cause was to rouse his suspicions. 'If you,' he once wrote to Wilberforce, 'were Wellington, and I were Massena, I should beat you by distracting your attention from the main point.' Any courtesies shown by Wilberforce to his ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... perhaps to excess; feeling as deeply as a prophet the responsibility of his heavenly mission, chaste in the midst of his seraglio, [Footnote: Seraglio: a harem.] strict in his attention to onerous [Footnote: Onerous: burdensome.] religious observances, and hereditarily very much of a fanatic—he aims to form himself upon Mahomet [Footnote: Mahomet (Mohammed): the founder of Mohammedanism. Born about 570 in Mecca(?) and died in 632.] as perfectly as may be: all this, moreover, is legible in his eyes, upon his fine countenance, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... the last resource, the naked bodies of the people. And here, my Lords, began such a scene of cruelties and tortures as I believe no history has ever presented to the indignation of the world,—such as I am sure, in the most barbarous ages, no politic tyranny, no fanatic persecution, has ever yet exceeded. Mr. Paterson, the commissioner appointed to inquire into the state of the country, makes his own apology and mine for opening this scene of horrors to you in the following ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the man of destiny, the bolt from the blue, the end of the chapter. A marvelous fanatic—a sort of reincarnation of the grimmest of the Covenanters—by one daring act shattered the machine and made impossible any further coalition on the principle of "nothing doing." This man of destiny was John Brown, whose attack on Harper's Ferry took place October 16th, ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... as a trance lecturer under what claimed to be spirit influence. Although speaking in the interest of a faith generally unpopular, and involved in no slight degree in crudities, extravagance, and quackery, she was herself neither fool nor fanatic. She was a true child of nature, direct and simple in her manners, and impatient of the artificiality and formal etiquette of fashionable society.' These poems are characterized by great case of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... unhappily ill fortune again overtook him. Henry IV., his protector, on whom he had relied for the rewards, honours, and promised grant of privileges, which had induced Lee to settle in France, was murdered by the fanatic Ravaillac; and the encouragement and protection which had heretofore been extended to him were at once withdrawn. To press his claims at court, Lee proceeded to Paris; but being a protestant as well as a foreigner, his representations were treated ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... or something very like it, in the first letter. There was no doubt left that the Mullah was trying to hide ignorance, as men of that fanatic ambitious mold so often will at the expense of better judgment. If fanatics were all-wise, it would be a poor world for the rest. "Very well," King said quietly. And with great pretense of copying the other letter out on fresh paper he now wrote what he ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... was sweeping our horses along and grinding our knees together. Some fanatic had fallen, and I could feel my horse recoil and half rear as it tramped on him, and I could hear the man screaming and the snarling menace from all about rising to a roar. But my head was over my shoulder as I ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Deborah calmly, "it's I. She as good as told me so last month. She thinks I've become a perfect fanatic—without a spare moment or ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... 'bumps,' and pass we on. Could anything be more completely metaphorical than such expressions as 'egregious' and 'fanatic?' 'Egregious' is chosen, e-grex—out of the flock, i. e., the best sheep, etc., selected from the rest, and set aside for sacred purposes; hence, distingue. This word, though occupying at present comparatively neutral ground, seems fast merging toward ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of all the rules of propriety, and as seeking an overthrow of the established laws of nature! I have been thrust into prison, and amerced in a heavy fine. Epithets, huge and unseemly, have been showered upon me without mercy. I have been branded as a fanatic, a madman, a disturber of the peace, an incendiary, a cutthroat, a monster, &c. &c. &c. Assassination has been threatened me in a multitude of anonymous letters. Private and public rewards to a very large amount, by combinations of individuals and by legislative bodies at the south, have been ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... as far as possible from the wild, waving arms, the frenzied eyes, the gaunt and wolfish aspect, the piercing, agonized voice of the fanatic, who had assumed to himself the solemn office of soul-comforter in a time of extremity. I saw from a distance his long, lank figure writhing like a sapling in a storm, as it overtopped the crowd; but his words were lost on my ear, and I sat leaning ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... 2nd), I endeavoured, by all the means in my power, to prevail upon my people to go on, but they still continued obstinate; and having reason to fear some further insult from the fanatic Moors, I resolved to proceed alone. Accordingly, the next morning, about two o'clock, I departed from Deena. It was moonlight, but the roaring of the wild beasts made it necessary to proceed ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... to find the liberty to worship God in accordance with their interpretation of the teachings of the Bible. They established quite a flourishing colony, at a place which they named St. Marys, near the coast. This was the first European settlement on the continent of North America. The fanatic Spaniards, learning that Protestants had taken possession of the country, sent out an expedition and utterly annihilated the settlement, putting men, women and children to the sword. Many of these unfortunate Protestants were hung in ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... is not for myself, but for this boy. You must save him, Antoine. Hear me, you must. Take him now to one of the lower cells and hide him. You risk nothing. His name is not on the prison register. He will not be called, he will not be missed; that fanatic will think that he has perished with the rest of us;" (Antoine shuddered, though the priest did not move a muscle;) "and when this mad fever has subsided and order is restored, he ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... those eyes than any common triumph. They had been hooded like a bird of prey, and now they flamed with a hawk's pride. A white fanatic heat burned in them, and I realized for the first time the terrible thing I had been up against. This man was more than a spy; in his foul way ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... The fanatic fled also, certain of a passport into Paradise; and as Evelyn Desmond fell back among her cushions, a shadow, that had not been there before, crept slowly across the shoulder of her muslin dress. The oncoming darkness mattered nothing to her now; and she herself, a mere atom of life, blown ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Henceforth, divided clans and antagonistic septs were to be unknown among them: only Catholic Irishmen were to remain ranked around the successors of "the saints" of old, all determined to be what they were, or die. But as laws, edicts, and measures of fanatic frenzy cannot destroy a nation, the new people was destined to survive ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... it has been quite a common thing to meet people who declare that the military plans of France are extraordinary and unjustified. In a drawing room a member of the Reichstag who is not a fanatic, speaking of the three years' service in France, went so far as to say: 'It is a provocation; we will not allow it.' More moderate persons, military and civil, glibly voice the opinion that France with her 40,000,000 inhabitants has no ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... John's College; and he retained a large collection in his Palace at Lambeth, which was bestowed on Hugh Peters after his death; it is satisfactory, however, to remember that 'the study of books' was recovered at the Restoration, and that Mr. Ashmole was appointed to examine the accounts of the fanatic. ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... the Treaty of Westphalia applicable to you? Not mere fanatic mystics, as Right Reverend Firmian asserts; protectible by no Treaty?" That was Friedrich Wilhelm's first question; and he set his two chief Berlin Clergymen, learned Roloff one of them, a divine of much fame, to catechise the two Salzburg Deputies, and report upon the point. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... God by piece-meal: keeping them alive (if it may be called a life) ut sentiant se mori, that they may be the more sensible of their dying" (p. 56.). Sir Walter Scott quotes a curious tract in Woodstock, entitled Vindication of the Book of Common Prayer against the Contumelious Slanders of the Fanatic Party terming it "Porridge." The author of this singular and rare tract (says Sir W.) indulges in the allegorical style, till he fairly hunts down the allegory. The learned divine chases his metaphor at a very cold scent, through ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... all the fanatic compiles, I can not think the day a bit diviner, Because no children, with forestalling smiles, Throng, happy, to the gates of Eden Minor— It is not plain, to my poor faith at least, That what we christen "Natural" on Monday, The wondrous history of Bird and Beast, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... whose passions were far fiercer than his own. He had married the sister of Hugh Speke, one of the falsest and most malignant of the libellers who brought disgrace on the cause of constitutional freedom. Aaron Smith, the solicitor of the Treasury, a man in whom the fanatic and the pettifogger were strangely united, possessed too much influence over the new Secretary, with whom he had, ten years before, discussed plans of rebellion at the Rose. Why Trenchard was selected in preference to many men of higher rank and greater ability ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the sake of consistency, to abandon his trade. The thought saddened him, but the conclusion seemed inevitable. It was absurd, he repeated to himself, that one who hated the priests should work for them. Marzio was a fanatic in his theories, but he had something of the artist's simplicity in his idea of the way they should be carried out. He would have thought it no harm to kill a priest, but it seemed to him contemptible to receive a priest's ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford |
