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Enthusiast   Listen
noun
Enthusiast  n.  One moved or actuated by enthusiasm; as:
(a)
One who imagines himself divinely inspired, or possessed of some special revelation; a religious madman; a fanatic.
(b)
One whose mind is wholly possessed and heated by what engages it; one who is influenced by a peculiar; fervor of mind; an ardent and imaginative person. "Enthusiasts soon understand each other."
Synonyms: Visionary; fanatic; devotee; zealot.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Enthusiast" Quotes from Famous Books



... these substantial and most effective mechanical drawings. Watson explained to me, in the most common-sense manner, his reasons for the various forms, arrangements, and proportions of the details of his designs. He was an enthusiast on the subject of Euclid; and to see the beautiful problems applied by him in working out his excellent drawings was to me ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... From the eighth century until Poggio discovered the complete manuscript at St. Gall in 1416, the world knew only mutilated fragments of the text. On the basis of an incomplete manuscript Etienne de Rouen prepared in the twelfth century an abridgment of Quintilian, and soon after an anonymous enthusiast made a selection of the Flores Quintilianei.[171] Thus, while the rhetorical works of Aristotle were practically unknown, and the Ciceronian tradition rested on the De inventione and the Ad Herennium, the rhetorical ideas of Quintilian, as preserved in abridgments and in ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... it were not to satisfy the curiosity of a friend; a friend whom you, Sir, will be glad to have made curious, as you originally pointed him out as a likely person to be charmed with the old Irish poetry you sent me. It is Mr. Gray, who is an enthusiast about those poems, and begs me to put the following queries to you; which I will do in his own words, and I may say truly, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... beauty, for that was no more than a reminiscence, if it was not always an illusion; was it because she rendered the spirit of M. Offenbach's operas so perfectly, that we liked her so much? "Ah, that movement!" cried an enthusiast, "that swing, that—that—wriggle!" She was undoubtedly a great actress, full of subtle surprises, and with an audacious appearance of unconsciousness in those exigencies where consciousness would summon the police—or should; she was ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... three hundred beads strung for necklaces, flint arrow-heads in large numbers, also many bronze implements, a quern, pierced shells, several sculptured stones found in Dolmens, and a great many Roman coins. It is the collection of a life, made by an enthusiast, and ought to be acquired by the museum of Aix. In the mairie at Trets is an urn full of calcined bones, in very good condition. It was found by two boys some little while ago in a tumulus on the side of the road to Puyloubier. The farmer whose land it was on, hearing of the discovery, and ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... in Mr. Robert, "that some golf enthusiast might have taken it into his head to practice a shot from ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford

... realizes 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

... ambitions, but also from personal resentments and personal vanity. What was remarkable was that this 'selflessness' had in it no element of 'quietism.' He retained all the keenness of desire for reform, all the zest of intellectual striving, and all the optimism, of the enthusiast." ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... colour, olive and silver, scarlet, and grey, was simply splendid. Laid on the table with one or two hares and cock pheasants and a few brace of partridges they made a fine sporting group in still life—a regular Thames Valley yield of fish and fowl. The landlord is a quiet enthusiast in this Thames fishing. It is a pleasure to watch him at work, whether being rowed down on a hot summer day by one of his men, and casting a long line under the willows for chub, or hauling out big perch or barbel. ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... Tichbourne was also an alderman, and had been Lord Mayor in 1658. He was an enthusiast in religion of the Independent party, and published several books, among which one was very celebrated, and is often referred to in the tracts of this period, entitled, "A Cluster of Canaan's Grapes. Being severall experimented truths ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... had made an impression. It is a small-featured, rather set, colorless face, not so pretty as Tom pretended, but very delicate and pure; but now it became suddenly the face of a fierce little bigot, and enthusiast to boot. ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... a character not only above reproach, but the purest, most beneficent, and most patriotic of all that France can boast in political stations in the sixteenth century, the confused and contradictory allegations of an enthusiast who had not counted the cost of his daring attempt—allegations wrung from him by threats and torture—will not be allowed to weigh for an instant ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... children...!" cried Flynn, 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

... 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 ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 9, September, 1896 • Various

... 1856, with a note by Thackeray. 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 ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... would you expect?" inquired Aymer, knowing the only plan to keep the enthusiast at bay was ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... the doctor, like an enthusiast in his profession; and John, though not a ready speaker, was drawn on by his notes of interest to say, "I don't really like anything so much as making out about man and what one ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... like old Reed of Odstock, with not only a strong preference for a particular kind of work, but a love of it as compelling as that of an artist for his art. Some friends of mine whom I went to visit over the border in Dorset told me of an enthusiast of this description who had recently died in the village. "What a pity you did not come sooner," they said. Alas! it is nearly always so; on first coming to stay at a village one is told that it has but just ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... doorway her voice died down and the expression of her face changed somewhat. The boy—still with his hands in his pockets—was looking on with an air which was as insolent as it was remarkable, an air of youthful scorn and malignant derision which staggered even the enthusiast. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Society of the Army of the Tennessee, at Toledo, Ohio, on the 15th of September, 1888. He had been over the whole region which extends from the Missouri River to Salt Lake in the early '50's, and, as has been said of him by a distinguished jurist, now dead: He was an enthusiast who communicated enthusiasm to his working forces, and he showed his skill in the management of hostile Indians, and the ruffians and gamblers who followed the camp. The close of the war, in which he distinguished ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... nonsense; but it is plain, straightforward, common-scene acting, which very much surprised us, more especially from an author, still more from an Irish author; and more still from an author, who in private life is a perfect enthusiast, and a fine phrenzied-eye orator. Fanny Kemble never appeared to greater advantage in public—in private, her charming conduct with regard to her brother, the young soldier, speaks volumes for her. They say she is going to marry a son of Keppell Craven's, Lord ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various

... missionary enthusiast must have erected these edifices," said Miss Church-Member as they were turning to enter the section ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... 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 and his doctors ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... excellent and unexceptionable to be reproached. Whatever may be said concerning the moral excellence of that person's character I will cheerfully assent to, and I could not listen without disgust to language impeaching his moral purity. This I can do without ceasing to suppose him an enthusiast; for there appears to me to be too many marks of it in the New Testament for the idea to be set aside by a few eloquent exclamations, and notes of admiration; if I am wrong in this idea or in others, I will not prove indocile to arguments that ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English

... multitudes of fathers and husbands, of women and children, of priests, monks, and religious virgins: the doors were barred on the inside, and they sought protection from the sacred dome, which they had so lately abhorred as a profane and polluted edifice. Their confidence was founded on the prophecy of an enthusiast or impostor; that one day the Turks would enter Constantinople, and pursue the Romans as far as the column of Constantine in the square before St. Sophia: but that this would be the term of their calamities: that an angel would ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... the opinion of others, to his own worldly advancement, or to any outer consideration, when in pursuit of the profession he loved; and he knew no other interest in life, save one. He had the face of a fanatic or an enthusiast; but also of a man whose understanding had been so cultivated as to temper enthusiasm ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... too, was an enthusiast in his quiet way. His was the enthusiasm of the student, and his work as historian and archaeologist absorbed, I must suppose, a great deal more of his interest and energy than was ever given to his cure of souls. He was rector of Tarn Regis, in Dorset, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... Who knew? Many things equally improbable had happened, and why should not this wondrous transformation, a transformation worthy of the wand of some potent Prospero, be effected? Valentine was a devoted friend and an enthusiast, and Monte-Cristo's maxim, "Wait and Hope," was her guiding star. "Wait and Hope!" Oh! how cheering, how reassuring ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg

... nature.—the dukkeripen of the woods, the streams, the stars, and the winds. But when I came to analyse the theories of man's place in nature expressed in the ignorant language of this Romany heathen, they seemed to me only another mode of expressing the mysticism of the religious enthusiast Wilderspin, the more learned and philosophic mysticism of my father, and the views of ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... ones from the raging seas. Moreover, Brown becomes the enthusiastic secretary of the Branch. And here let me remark that no society of this nature can hope to succeed, unless its secretary be an enthusiast. ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne

... No rapt enthusiast, or mystic sage, No Asian founder of a faith divine, No bard, or writer of inspired page Hath ever failed to worship at thy shrine, O Nourisher of steadfast self-control, Of noble thoughts, ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... 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 above the affairs of this world, he freely mingled ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... dictate. All I should do would be to present Wanda to her. 'Here is a girl who has the misfortune to be a Bukaty; who has no mother; who has a father who is a plotter and an old ruffian—a Polish noble, in fact—and a brother who is an enthusiast, and as brave as only a prince can be.' I should say, 'You see that circumstances have thrown this girl upon the world, practically alone—on the hard, hard upper-class world—with only one heart to break. It is only men who have a whole row of hearts on ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... Rolls receive his Name, The young Enthusiast quits his Ease for Fame; Resistless burns the Fever of Renown, Caught from the strong Contagion of the Gown; O'er Bodley's Dome his future Labours spread, And Bacon's Mansion trembles o'er his Head; Are these thy Views? proceed, illustrious Youth, And Virtue guard ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson

... enthusiast had a power of flooding others with his atmosphere. He flooded Claude with it. And his ambition made his atmosphere what it was. Here was another who meant ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... course, her book must fail. She is full of all kinds of chimerical expedients. Why, this very evening she was propounding the most preposterous scheme to me, as generous as it was nonsensical. No, no, my dear fellow, even to you I won't betray confidence. The girl is an enthusiast. Now enthusiasts are always morbid and unhappy unless they can find vent for their energies. Why don't you give her the natural and healthy vents supplied by wifehood and motherhood? Why do you wait for Hinton's first ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... 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

... history introduces Will G. Steel, widely known as "the Father of Crater Lake National Park," a pioneer of the highest type, a gold-seeker in the coast ranges and the Klondike, a school-teacher for many years, and a public-spirited enthusiast. In 1869, a farmer's boy in Kansas, he read a newspaper account of an Oregon lake with precipice sides five thousand feet deep. Moving to Oregon in 1871, he kept making inquiries for seven years before he verified ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... progress, though slow; now with a giant stride across an exceptionally doubtful spot, now zigzagging from side to side. The lane was long, and he seemed to make but little advance. But there was a spirit in him not to be stayed by mud, or clay, or any other obstacle. It is pleasant to see an enthusiast, whether right or wrong, in these cynical days. He was too young to have acquired much worldly wisdom, but he was full of the high spirit which arises from thorough conviction and the sense of personal consecration conferred by the mission on the man. He pushed on steadily till brought ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... and before I turned I knew that this was an enthusiast's voice, but not an enthusiast without knowledge. Whoever spoke was strong enough, real enough. I liked the voice and felt a certain inner movement of friendship. Some shift among the great actors, some parting of banners, kept us suspended and staring for a moment, then the view closed against ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... bad. I have since "studied" his work; and long before you had sent me your contemptuous challenge, had been preparing an examination of it, which will shortly appear in "The Watchman" in a series of essays. You deem me an "enthusiast"—an enthusiast, I presume, because I am not quite convinced with yourself and Mr. Godwin that mind will be omnipotent over matter, that a plough will go into the field and perform its labour without ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... mentioned casually in his neighbourhood, on the authority of one of the managers, that there was not that day a solvent bank in Scotland. The different conversations rise to a babel, various speakers enforce their views on the floor with umbrellas, one enthusiast exhorts his brother unfortunates from a chair, when suddenly there is a hush, and then in a painful silence the shareholders hang on the lips of the accountant, from whom they learn that things could not be worse, that the richest shareholder may be ruined, and that ordinary ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... hobby was golf. He was president of the Sutton Golf Club, and had arranged to play a match with Mr. Spence. This gentleman, it appeared, was likewise an enthusiast, and had brought to Silverdale a leather bag filled ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... branches of the trees. In this music Carl took such delight that he would listen to it, for hours, while great tears of pleasure and excitement would roll down his sun-burnt cheeks. But it was the pleasure and excitement of a religious enthusiast in the house of the God he worshipped. Carl never spoke of these sentiments, and how would it have been possible for him to do so. He never thought from whence they originated. He ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... a home, clothed him, felt for him after that the condescending, curious affection which a rough barn-yard hen might feel for its adopted poult, not yet sure if it will turn out an eagle or a silly gull. It was a strange affinity between the lank-limbed, cloudy-brained enthusiast at one end of the porch and the shallow-eyed, tobacco-chewing old Scofield at the other,—but a real affinity, striking something deeper in their natures than blood-kinship. Whether Dode shared in it was doubtful; she echoed the "Poor David" in just the voice with which high-blooded women ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... a beginner, and such as half-a-dozen words from an expert would clear up, regarded gravely as a discovery calculated to make its author famous for all time. Yet, when one considers the probable consequences of the blunder to the unhappy enthusiast, and perchance to his family, it is difficult not to feel a sense of pity, quite apart from that pity allied to contempt which is excited by his mistake. A few words added to the account of Newton's theory, which the paradoxist had probably read in some astronomical treatise, would have prevented ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... mother—reserving the merest fraction for himself—precluded that idea. But he was young and human, and he was youthfully and humanly greedy to possess the good things of life for himself and for the one being he passionately loved. It would, indeed, have been an enthusiast in virtue who could have blamed him for counting upon ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... troops in the neighbourhood of Paris were under the immediate command of General Count Miloradovitch, a man of large property, and unbounded generosity, and an enthusiast in his profession. He had been in the habit of always making the troops under his command some kind of present on his birth-day. During the retreat of the French from Moscow, this day came round when he was not quite prepared for it. "I have no money here," said he ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... recommended for rickets, although the evidence is that in Virginia the high cost of importing the rarer substances inclined local physicians toward the less elaborate compounds. Venice treacle, recommended by the Reverend Clayton's imaginary purge enthusiast consisted of vipers, white wine, opium, licorice, red roses, St. John's wort, and at least a half-dozen ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... The conversation may well have taken place literally as reported: even though the Czar hoped to postpone the rupture for some months, he may have given his complete confidence under four eyes. Who can measure the fascination under which the young enthusiast fell at first sight? In any case nothing apparently occurred to disturb the amiability of either monarch. It was doubtless agreed that they should form a dual alliance, absolute and exclusive.[9] "I have often slept two in a bed," the suave but ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... one whom early science led To walk with Newton through the immense of heaven, Who soared with Milton, and with Mina bled, And all thou hadst in freedom's cause hast given? Oh! fond enthusiast—in the after time Our children's children of thy worth shall tell— England proclaims thy honesty a crime, "Cease to ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... regret that our limits forbid copious extracts from these treasures, but do the more earnestly entreat the reader to buy the volume and make himself familiar with it. Whoever our Virginian may be, he is a rising star, well worth observing. We find him at times a gleaming enthusiast,—a man burning with the spirit of the war, involuntarily uttering the most thrilling passages of Scripture,—and again provoking laughter by dry humor and cutting jests. Let the reader in illustration take the following paragraphs in the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... praise I have given you, that flattery can find a place in Elysium, allow me to lament, with the tender sorrow of a friend, that a man so superior to all other follies could give into the reveries of a Madame Guyon, a distracted enthusiast. How strange was it to see the two great lights of France, you and the Bishop of Meaux, engaged in a controversy whether a madwoman was ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... me by lumbermen of the nest of the Black Vulture in the Limberlost, I hastened to tell my husband the wonderful story of the big black bird, the downy white baby, the pale blue egg, and to beg back a rashly made promise not to work in the Limberlost. Being a natural history enthusiast himself, he agreed that I must go; but he qualified the assent with the proviso that no one less careful of me than he, might accompany me there. His business had forced him to allow me to work alone, with hired guides or the help of oilmen and farmers elsewhere; but a Limberlost trip ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... his manner contradicted his speech—"woe to the idealist and enthusiast! Woe to them who live in the world to come! Woe to them who live only for a hope whose fulfilment they will not behold on earth! Drink not, therefore, of that cup, dear child, lest Duke Virgil's day should come, and thou shouldst not know it. For come it will, and ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... Ere heaving bellows learn'd to blow, While organs yet were mute; Timotheus, to his breathing flute And sounding lyre, Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire. At last divine Cecilia came, Inventress of the vocal frame; 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

... exactly, Miss Sharp," the other enthusiast replied. "You don't mind my cigar, do you, Miss Sharp?" Miss Sharp loved the smell of a cigar out of doors beyond everything in the world—and she just tasted one too, in the prettiest way possible, and gave ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Taffin, the Walloon preacher, had been tractable, and had agreed to postpone his exercises. He furthermore had accompanied the pensionary to the cathedral, in order to persuade Herman Modet that it would be better for him likewise to defer his intended ministrations. They had found that eloquent enthusiast already in the great church, burning with impatience to ascend upon the ruins, and quite unable to resist the temptation of setting a Flemish psalm and preaching a Flemish sermon within the walls which had for so many centuries been vocal only ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... family vaults of the Cornelii: one in the aristocratic burial-grounds between the viae Appia and Latina, the other in the subterranean haunts of a despised and persecuted race. One need not be a deep thinker or a religious enthusiast to appreciate that each is worthy of the other; and that the Cornelius of the third century who chose to die the death of a criminal rather than betray his conscience, is a worthy descendant of the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... Linwood's and Edith's first letters; and when I answered them, it seemed to me my heart was flowing out in a gushing stream of expression, that had long sought vent. I knew they must have smiled at my exuberance of language, for the young enthusiast always luxuriates under epistolary influences. I had another correspondent, a very unexpected one, Richard Clyde, who, sanctioned by Mrs. Linwood, begged permission to write to me as a friend. How could I refuse, when Mrs. Linwood said it ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... your tour of admiring inspection. I assure you they are worthy of it. As a choice collection of ferns in such perfect condition, its equal cannot be found in all the wide world! As a collector I am an enthusiast; for many months I have travelled far and wide in my efforts to add new specimens of rare beauty to the original collection. You may guess how much I prize it when I tell you that money ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... or perish in the attempt, he closed with the bustard; but the bustard, who had formed a counter-resolution that he should do neither, threw him, stunned him, and was last seen making off due west. This weird main, at that stage of metempsychosis, may have been a sleep-walker or an enthusiast or a robber; but I awoke one night to find him in the dark at my bedside, repeating the Athanasian Creed in a terrific voice. I paid my bill next day, and retired from the ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens

... reintroduce among the anglican clergy the pure heroic type.' Another was Francis Doyle, 'whose genial character supplied a most pleasant introduction for his unquestionable poetic genius.' A third was James Milnes Gaskell, a youth endowed with precocious ripeness of political faculty, an enthusiast, and with a vivacious humour that enthusiasts often miss. Doyle said of him that his nurse must have lulled him to sleep by parliamentary reports, and his first cries on awaking in his cradle must have been ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... our language should always be adapted to their capacities; that is, it should agree with their advancement. You may talk to a zealot in politics of religion, the qualities of forbearance, candor, and veracity; to the enthusiast of science and philosophy; to the bigot of liberality and improvement; to the miser of benevolence and suffering; to the profligate of industry and frugality; to the misanthrope of philanthropy and patriotism; to ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... would have scorned to draw back, for he was a "hero of romance;" an enthusiast of the deepest dye, with an inquiring mind, a sanguine disposition, and a fervent belief in all things great and good and grand. He was also a six-footer in his socks, a horse in constitution, a Hercules in frame, with a hook nose ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... and one for his heels." The old lady of "The Choughs" liked nothing so much as her game of cribbage in the evenings, and the board lay ready on the little table by her elbow in the cozy bar, a sure stepping-stone to her good graces. Tom somehow became an enthusiast in cribbage, and would always loiter behind his companions for his quiet game; chatting pleasantly while the old lady cut and shuffled the dirty pack, striving keenly for the nightly stake of sixpence, which he seldom ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... peace and good order of the colony, as in accordance with the principles of self-denial and virtuous living on which it was founded, that every disorder should be checked in the bud. Considering the variety of adventurers, of all shades of character, from the religious enthusiast, seeking in unknown regions, invested with strange charms by a heated imagination, the kingdom of saints upon earth, which he had vainly hoped to erect in the old world, down to the reckless freebooter, whose life had been passed in wild ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... me," murmured our enthusiast, leaping from his bed at the first peep of dawn and arming himself from head to foot. Then treading softly, so as not to alarm the household, he went to the stable, saddled Rozinante, and leading him out through a back gate of the yard, mounted and rode forth into the plain, hugely ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... of Rome. The ignorant enthusiast whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy, and, whatever the polite and learned may think, a most dangerous enemy, the Catholic Church makes a champion. She bids him nurse his beard, covers him with a gown and hood of coarse dark stuff, ties a rope round his waist, and sends him ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of which two or three hundred settlers were sent prior to 1620,[4] and Berkeley Hundred whose records alone are available. The grant for this last was issued in February, 1619, to a missionary enthusiast, George Thorpe, and his partners, whose collective holdings of London Company stock amounted to thirty-five shares. To them was given and promised land in proportion to stock and settlers, together with a bonus of 1500 acres in view of their project for converting the Indians. Their ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... today. "Who could abide such a fanatical, fiery fool? such an uncompromising character? Nobody could work with him, or he with them!" (What a lie! Jesus did, and they got on well together.) A tactless enthusiast, who considered it his business to tell every man the unvarnished truth regardless of consequences. He won his degree hands down, and without a touch of the spur. A first-class one, too—that of the headman's axe—next best ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd

... polite thanks from the girls, but one man measured Molly-Cotton from the top curl of her head to the tip of her slippers, and answered, " I accept the invitation. When may I come?" He came, and left as great a moth enthusiast as any of us. This incident will be recognized as furnishing the basis on which to build the ballroom scene in "A Girl of the Limberlost*", in which Philip and Edith quarrel over the capture of a yellow Emperor. But what of these students ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... with the matchless speed of which our schooner was capable when she got a chance. It wellnigh tore Bradford's heart-strings to leave his icebergs once and for all behind; for a more fascinated human being I believe there never was than this true enthusiast while on that coast. He must paint the bergs with rare power, must get the very spirit and suggestion of them on canvas, or his soul will quit him, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... still pursuing the tenor of his way. The interest of marriage was not, therefore, in his case a fresh burden on a soul already laden with a variety of side pursuits. He was neither socially nor philanthropically active; he was not a club man, nor an athletic enthusiast; he was on no committees; he voted on election days, but he did not take an active part in politics. For Selma's sake all this must be changed; and he was glad to acknowledge that he owed it to himself as well as to her to ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... 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, with a ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie

... unworthy of the honour, and had much rather have trodden the turf of the mountains. Mammon would never have taken his eyes off the pavement; mine soon left the contemplation of it, and fixed on St. Peter's thumb, enshrined with a degree of elegance, and adorned by some malapert enthusiast with several of the most delicate antique cameos I ever beheld; the subjects, Ledas and sleeping Venuses, are a little too pagan, one should think, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... formed the habit of not expressing his feelings when really vexed, and it stood him in good stead now. Dale's blunder was almost irreparable, yet he could not find it in his heart to blame the man for being an enthusiast. ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... lose his temper. Through the few women and children above where Hester sat, he made his way towards the crowd of faces below. When he reached her he seized her arm from behind and began to raise at once and push her down the stair. He, too, was an enthusiast in his way. Some of the faces below grew red with anger, and their eyes flamed at the doctor. A loud murmur arose, and several began to force their way up to rescue her, as they would one of their own from the police. But Hester, the moment she saw who it was that had laid hold ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... has probably left the shop.' Reflecting after this fashion, Sanin put on his hat, however, and went into the street; he turned a corner, another, and to his unspeakable delight, saw Emil before him. With a satchel under his arm, and a roll of papers in his hand, the young enthusiast was ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... great spirits of the war—the one a civilian, the other a soldier. The Athenaeum condenses his views concerning them very successfully. Kossuth, according to him was a great and generous man, of noble heart and fervid patriotism, at once an enthusiast and a statesman, gifted with "a mysterious power" over "the hearts of his countrymen;" possibly, however, of too melancholic and spiritual a temperament for the crisis, and unfortunately a civilian, so that notwithstanding his "marvelous influence to rouse and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... the party had planned to secure mounts at the mill, and to continue the journey on horseback. Zeke, however, realized the advantage in continuing by machine, were this possible, and he suggested it to the driver. The man was doubtful, but, too, he was an enthusiast in his work, and the opportunity of thus climbing the mountains, where no other car had been, appealed strongly to his ambition. In the end, he consented, with a prudent stipulation concerning possible damages. So, without pause, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... Holcroft's novels, "Alwyn; or, The Gentleman Comedian," founded on his own adventures when a travelling actor, he gives the character of an enthusiast who had conceived the idea of establishing a humane asylum for animals, the consequences of which he describes. "I am pestered, plagued, teased, tormented to death. I believe all the cats in Christendom are assembled in Oxfordshire. I am obliged ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... of that turbulent and refractory enthusiast, John Lilburne, alias Free-born John, alias Lilburne the Trouble-world, there ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various

... do you bet?... It is a prayer-book which bears the signature of Marshal de Montluc, and which Cardinal Guerillot discovered. Is that true? He spoke to Mademoiselle Hafner about it, and he thought he would mitigate your animosity toward her by telling you she was an enthusiast and wished to buy it. Is that true as well? And you, wretched man, had only one thought, to deprive that poor little thing of the trifle. Is that true? We spent the evening before last together at Countess Steno's; she talked to me of nothing but her desire to have the book on which the illustrious ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... 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 again dipping his hands in a political 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; ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... 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

... though truth may light bestow, Not always warmth the beams impart, Blest he who gains the boon to know, Nor buys the knowledge with the heart. For warmth and light a blessing both to be, Feel as the enthusiast—as the world-wise see. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... his lot were cast, Alas! the youthful lover slain, Poetical enthusiast, A friendly hand thy life hath ta'en! There is a spot the village near Where dwelt the Muses' worshipper, Two pines have joined their tangled roots, A rivulet beneath them shoots Its waters to the neighbouring vale. There the tired ploughman loves to lie, The reaping ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... their souls. Many old Civil War veterans, who would not consent for their sons to volunteer in the Spanish-American War, would have gone themselves had they been able. Some did go. To men so disposed it is useless to talk of the horrors of war. Give us a just grievance; let some competent enthusiast inflame this passion with a war cry like "Remember the Maine," "Fifty-four forty or fight," "Liberty or death," and, reenforced by the animal inherent in man, it will arouse popular demonstrations devoid of all reason, creating a force that cannot be controlled by a cold, calculating ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... arboretums in our country may be mentioned that of Mr. Sargent at Wodeneshe. Mr. Sargent, as may be seen by his supplement to Downing's "Landscape-Gardening," is an enthusiast in the culture of conifers; he is reputed to have made liberal importations, and the results of his attempts at acclimation, given to the public, have aided others in like endeavors. Judge Field, of Princeton, New Jersey, has a pinetum ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... so frequently quoted, must be exactly the sort of person whom he wanted. When the condition annexed to Effie's pardon rendered it highly probable that David Deans would choose to change his place of residence, this idea again occurred to the Duke more strongly, and as he was an enthusiast equally in agriculture and in benevolence, he imagined he was serving the purposes of both, when he wrote to the gentleman in Edinburgh entrusted with his affairs, to inquire into the character of David Deans, cowfeeder, and so forth, at St. Leonard's Crags; and if he ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... old Black to a McGill enthusiast whom he had fought in the famous championship battle four years ago. "This is ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... the Rev. J. Fountagne, "as I have been told, was an enthusiast in music, and cultivated most of all the friendship of musical men, especially of Handel, who visited him often, and had a great predilection for his society. This leads me to relate an anecdote which I have on the best authority. While Marylebone Gardens ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... journalist, of very fine character. He was an enthusiast, more than commonly perfervid, even for a Scot. Whatever he believed, he believed with all his heart and soul. He was always in earnest, and always striving to give effect to his opinions. His leaders were really polished essays, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... no means," returned Biquitous, earnestly; "but you are an enthusiast without ballast. Enthusiasm is a fine, noble quality. The want of ballast is a grievous misfortune. Study mechanics, my boy, a little more than you have yet done, before venturing on further inventions, and don't theorise too much. You have been revelling of late in the regions ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... it slightingly in the air, and handed it back. "Porphyry, I see." That was his only word about it. He said it cheerily. He left no room for discussion. You could not damn a thing worse. "Ever been in Santa Rita?" pursued Scipio, while the enthusiast slowly pushed his rock back into his pocket. "That's down in New Mexico. Ever been to Globe, Arizona?" And Scipio talked away about the mines he had known. There was no getting at Shorty any more that evening. Trampas was foiled of his fish, or of learning ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... of what was best in the creations of man ran in his veins with his blood. He cared for beautiful things, and he knew what things were beautiful and what were not. The second-rate never made any appeal to him. The first-rate found in him a welcoming enthusiast. He never wearied of looking at fine pictures, at noble statues, at bronzes, at old jewelled glass, at delicate carvings, at perfect jewels. He was genuinely moved by great architecture. And to music he was almost fanatically devoted, as are ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... His single concession to sea-faring attire was a yachting cap several sizes too small, perched on his spreading brown curls. His face was red; his eyes anxious, blue and bulging. He had the unwholesome, frenetic aspect of the patent medicine enthusiast, not uncommon in the North. Garth interrupted him in a grave discussion of the relative merits of "Pain Killer" and ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... 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

... "Christ is risen from the dead;" while the corresponding side within the enclosure bears as its motto, "And is become the first-fruits of them that slept." And truly it would be hard to imagine a spot of earth, within which the enthusiast,—aye, and even the man who, without being an enthusiast, has ever so slight a tinge of romance in his nature,—would more desire to sleep out that ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... who had lived seventeen years in Paris. He was thoroughly acquainted with every phase of Parisian life, from the highest to the lowest, and knew the principal political characters of the country. He was a thorough radical, and an enthusiast. He came to Paris for an education, and when he had finished it, he had imbibed the most radical opinions respecting human liberty, and as his native town was New Orleans, and his father a wealthy slaveholder, he concluded to remain in Paris. When I found him, he was living in the Latin ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... response—seemed of ill-omen, and, taken with their knowledge of the man into whose hands they had fallen, should have quenched the spark, these two, having special reasons, the one the buoyancy of youth, the other the faith of an enthusiast, cherished the flame. In the breast of one indeed it had blazed into a confidence so arrogant that he now took all for ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... but of the mass of humanity,—the new perception has been reached, that Work is the basis of all personal and social virtue. Toil, said the old Scripture, is God's punishment for man's sin. Toil, says the religious enthusiast, is a necessary incident of an existence whose higher exercise lies in spiritual emotion reaching toward a future Paradise. But toil, to modern eyes, is the root which binds man to his native earth, and transmits all the sap ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... to find Polly a willing convert to my charitable schemes, but I had not expected to find in Cousin Helen so strong an ally as she proved. But our ideas were no novelty to her, as we soon discovered. In truth, at nine years old, she was a bit of an enthusiast. She read with avidity religious biographies furnished by Miss Blomfield. She was delicate in health, but reticent and resolute in character. She was ready for any amount of self-sacrifice. She contributed liberally to our box; and I fancy that she and Polly continued ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... absolute earnestness may make possible for a plain and untrained man. Nothing, of course, can alter the fundamental distinctions. 'Paradise Lost' is certainly greater than 'Pilgrim's Progress,' because it is the work of a poet and a scholar as well as a religious enthusiast. But 'Pilgrim's Progress,' let it be said frankly, will always find a dozen readers where Milton has one by choice, and no man can afford to think otherwise than respectfully of achievements which speak powerfully and nobly ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... return to his lodgings in Marybone, up three pair of stairs, and labour at what he calls the commercial part of his profession. There cannot, he says, be such a difference betwixt any two portions of existence, as between that in which the artist, if an enthusiast, collects the subjects of his drawings, and that which must necessarily he dedicated to turning over his portfolio, and exhibiting them to the provoking indifference, or more provoking criticism, of fashionable amateurs. 'During the summer of my year,' says Dudley, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... attentively and without interrupting the relation. He could not help fancying that the necessity of yielding the secret, so long and so jealously guarded by the physician, was not entirely distasteful to the enthusiast. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... exploration has been given here, and that sacrificed in detail to keep from cumbering the sweep of his adventure. No attempt has been made to pass judgment on Drake's character. Like Baranof of a later day, he was a curious mixture of the supremely selfish egoist, and of the religious enthusiast, alternately using his egoism as a support for his religion, and his religion as a support for his egoism; and each reader will probably pass judgment on Drake according as the reader's ideal of manhood is the altruist or the egoist, the Christ-type ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... Saffron embraced it with eagerness; with much animation he discussed the merits, whether practical or decorative, of various uniforms—field-gray, khaki, horizon blue, Air Force blue, and a dozen others worn by various armies, corps, and services. Alec was something of an enthusiast in this line too; he soon forgot his embarrassment, and joined in the conversation freely, though with a due respect to the obvious thoroughness of Mr. Saffron's information. Watching the pair with an amused smile, Beaumaroy contented himself with putting ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... enthusiast: all great men are. He had risen from the ranks by the absolute force of his great untiring, restless and loving spirit. From a day laborer in a cotton-mill he had become principal owner of a plant that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... presently enticed away by a bevy of young ladies, Hortense de Beauharnais leading them, to get the learned professor's opinion on some rare specimens of botany growing in the park. Nothing loath—for he was good-natured as he was clever, and a great enthusiast withal in the study of plants—he allowed the merry, talkative girls to lead him where they would. He delighted them in turn by his agreeable, instructive conversation, which was rendered still more piquant by the odd ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... Edward Howe was known throughout Acadia as a lover of the Acadians, and as one who had more than once stood between them and certain well-deserved restraint. He was attracted by Pierre's intelligence of face and respectful fearlessness of demeanor, and he determined to give the young enthusiast ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts

... the Sussex enthusiast, refusing an invitation to spend a summer abroad, express the feeling of many ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... than my whole collection put together. It is my specimens of Scotch pebbles; and I owe them solely to the generosity and good-will of my Scotch friends. I assure you that is a proud reflection to me. I am a perfect enthusiast in Scotch pebbles, and, I may say, in Scotch people. In fact, I am an enthusiast in whatever I am interested in; and at present, I must own, my heart is set upon making a complete collection ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... and the natural passions; and therefore I say that you don't believe the doctrine you preach. St Paul was an enthusiast. He believed so that his ambition and passions did not war against his creed. So does the Eastern fanatic who passes half his life erect upon a pillar. As for me, I will believe in no belief that does not make itself manifest by outward signs. I will think no preaching sincere that is not recommended ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... looked upon it as the folle du logis, which must be strictly supervised by the reason. Boileau is the aesthetic equivalent of Cartesian intellectualism, Boileau que la raison a ses regles engage, Boileau the enthusiast for allegory. France was infected with the mathematical spirit of Cartesianism and all possibility of a serious consideration of poetry and of art was thus removed. Witness the diatribes of Malebranche ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... it shut off from any woman or any man. 'I counsel you to study sanctification,' wrote Rutherford, the same year to the Lady Cardoness. And if you think that Rutherford was a closet mystic and an unpractical and head-carried enthusiast, too good for this rough world, read his letter to Lady Cardoness, and confess your ignorance of this great and good man. 'Deal kindly with your tenants,' he writes, 'and let your conscience be your factor'; and again, 'When your husband's ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte

... studying the elements acting and reacting upon our Church there. I have come to the conclusion that the success of Holy Church throughout the world depends upon its advance in the United States during the next few years. I have become an American enthusiast! The glorious work of making America Catholic is so fraught with consequences of vastest import that my blood surges with the enthusiasm of an old Crusader! But there is much still to be done. America is a field white for the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... experiment was made some years ago by sending a malarial mosquito by mail from Italy to England, where an enthusiast allowed himself to be bitten by the insect. He had had no trace of malaria before, but a week after the mosquito's bite he came down with the disease. It has also been noted that in such parts of the country as Greenland and Alaska, where ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... wrong on the path behind it, which the wisest of mankind, of their own set purpose, could never have found the way to rectify. Whatever contributes to the great cause of good, contributes to all its subdivisions and varieties; and, on this score, the lover of his race, the enthusiast, the philanthropist of whatever theory, might lend his aid to put a man, like the one before us, into the leadership of the ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... . People smile at the "enthusiasm of youth"—that enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back at with a sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they ever lost it. . . . Do not fear being considered an enthusiast. What matter? But pray for tact, the true tact which love alone can give, to prevent scandalising a ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley

... 'Rajastan.' I had rather see Rajastan or Rajpootana than any part of India. It would really be interesting. Colonel Tod seems to be an enthusiast about the country and the people. He was there apparently at least sixteen years. The story of the beautiful Princess of Oudeypore [Footnote: Krishna Komari. She was poisoned by her father to avoid the hostilities ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)

... eyes, the white of which predominated. Simply dressed, he nevertheless gave the impression of superior social station. He was of the New England theological-seminary type—narrow-chested, gaunt as to visage, by temperament drawn to theology, or, in default of religious belief, an ardent enthusiast in sociology. The contracted temples, uncertain gaze, and absence of fulness beneath the eyes betrayed the unimaginative man. Art was a sealed book to him, though taxation fairly fired his suspicious soul. He was nervous because he was dyspeptic, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... fortune to save the souls of the people of Messina; his people whom he regarded and who regarded him less as a feudal lord than as a father and a comrade. He had pictured her as a nervous, angular woman with a pale, ascetic face, and with the restless eyes of an enthusiast, dressed in black and badly dressed, and with a severe and narrow intelligence. But he had prepared himself to forgive her personality, for the sake of the high and generous impulse that inspired her. And when he was presented to her as she really was, and found her young, lovable, ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis

... him, and made no overtures to him, and he avoided them. During the first two years he spent in the university, he only made acquaintance with one student, from whom he took lessons in Latin. This student Mihalevitch by name, an enthusiast and a poet, who loved Lavretsky sincerely, by chance became the means of bringing about an important change ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... than many of those who live in it. When I am there, Miss Frere, I am with an old uncle, who is an antiquary and an enthusiast on the subject of his native city. From the first it has been his pleasure to go with me all over London, and tell me the secrets of its old streets, and show me what was worth looking at. London was my picture-book, my theatre, where I saw tragedy and comedy together; ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... Auberon decrees that the dull and respectable London boroughs shall be given city guards in resplendent armour, each borough to have its own coat of arms, its city walls, tocsin, and the like. The idea is taken seriously by the second hero, Adam Wayne of Notting Hill, an enthusiast utterly lacking any sense of humour, who goes to war with the other boroughs of London to protect a small street which they have designed to pull down in the interests of commercial development. Pimlico, Kensington and the rest attack Notting Hill. Men bleed and die in the contest and by ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... playing on the new organ excited admiration, but his artistic temperament frequently threatened to be his undoing. For the young enthusiast was no sooner seated at the organ to conduct the church music than he forgot that the choir and congregation were depending on him and would begin to improvise at such length that the singing had to stop altogether, while the people listened in mute admiration. Of course there ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... a desperate enthusiast, Bullen. I cannot make out how you keep it up so well. I really envy ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty

... all around, whether blinding and topping off the half-wild ponies or throwing them and tacking cold-wrought "cowboy" shoes to their flint-like feet, and more than one enthusiast came away limping or picking the loose skin from a bruised hand. Yet through it all the dominant note of dare-devil hilarity never failed. The solitude of the ranch, long endured, had left its ugly mark on all of them. They were starved for ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge



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