"Fanatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... neighboring poor To starve and shiver at the schemer's door, While in the world's most liberal ranks enrolled, He turns some vast philanthropy to gold; Religion, taking every mortal form But that a pure and Christian faith makes warm, Where not to vile fanatic passion urged, Or not in vague philosophies submerged, Repulsive with all Pharisaic leaven, And making laws to stay the laws of Heaven! And on the other, scorn of sordid gain, Unblemished honor, truth without a stain, Faith, justice, reverence, charitable wealth, And, for the poor ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... there came a man from the West—a tall, gaunt, grizzly, shaggy-haired, God-fearing man, a son of the Puritans, whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. A dangerous fanatic or lunatic, he was called, and, with the aid of a few poor negroes whom he had stolen from slavery, he defied the power of this whole slave-catching United States. A little square brick building, once a sort of car-shop, ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... moment, the idealistic Joseph, who with an excess of zeal, tried for political equality, made enemies of his nobles, enemies of his peasants, likewise. The great reformer was held a fanatic, intent on destroying government. Too far ahead of his time, his plans for ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... danger. A letter of his . . . rash, impetuous, as were all his actions, and written to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, has fallen into the hands of a fanatic. Armand is hopelessly compromised . . . to-morrow, perhaps he will be arrested . . . after that the guillotine . . . unless . . . oh! it is horrible!" . . . she said, with a sudden wail of anguish, as all the events of the past night came rushing back to her mind, "horrible! . . . and you do not ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... now defending the illusory forms the great ideas take. I am giving you examples of the fact that this creature Man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero. He may be abject as a citizen; but he is dangerous as a fanatic. He can only be enslaved whilst he is spiritually weak enough to listen to reason. I tell you, gentlemen, if you can show a man a piece of what he now calls God's work to do, and what he will later on call by many new names, you can make him entirely reckless of the consequences ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... legislation they have fenced them around with checks to guard against the effects of hasty action, of error, of combination, and of possible corruption. Error, selfishness, and faction have often sought to rend asunder this web of checks and subject the Government to the control of fanatic and sinister influences, but these efforts have only satisfied the people of the wisdom of the checks which they have imposed and of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... The natural result followed. In the year 1140, his enemies, headed by St. Bernard, who had long regarded him with suspicion, raised a cry of heresy against him, as subjecting everything to reason. Bernard, who was nothing if not a fanatic, and who managed to give vent to all his passions by placing them in the service of his God, at once denounced him to the Pope, to cardinals, and to bishops, in passionate letters, full of rhetoric, demanding his condemnation as a perverter ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... turning-point in Bilderdijk's life. He had been brought up in unswerving faith in the cause of the house of Orange, was a fanatic monarchist and Calvinist, "anti-revolutionary, anti-Barneveldtian, anti-Loevesteinisch, anti-liberal" (thus Da Costa), a warm supporter of William the Fifth, and at the entrance of the French in 1795 he refused ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 with this ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... 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
... foot stood a rough sort of windlass. Above, on the crest of the field, where a band of men had begun to scramble at the sentinel's halloo, there sat on a white pony the bright-robed figure of the tall fanatic, Fang ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... was a very extraordinary character, and produced many effusions of genius in early life, till he became a mystical fanatic. It was said of him that "he was the greatest madman among poets, and the best poet among madmen." His comedy of "The Visionaries" is one of the most extraordinary dramatic projects, and, in respect to its genius and its lunacy, may be ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... a federalist sheet, Hamilton's death called forth "the voice of deep lament" save from "the rancorous Jacobin, the scoffing deist, the snivelling fanatic, and the imported scoundrel." "Were I asked," said an apologist, "whether General Hamilton had vices, in the face of the world, in the presence of my God, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... physics, but that has not made the foregoing presence of an engineer less obvious. In this world, however, part of the beautiful poise of things depends upon the fact that whenever you have an exaggerated fanatic of any sort, his exact opposite at once springs up to neutralise him. You have a Mameluke: up jumps a Crusader. You have a Fenian: up jumps an Orangeman. Every force has its recoil. And so these more hide-bound scientists must ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... because the poor don had professed in theory a preference for non-existence. For this very unacademic type of argument he had been sent down. Vomiting as he was with revulsion, from the pessimism that had quailed under his pistol, he made himself a kind of fanatic of the joy of life. He cut across all the associations of serious-minded men. He was gay, but by no means careless. His practical jokes were more in earnest than verbal ones. Though not an optimist in the absurd sense of maintaining that life is all beer and skittles, he did really seem to ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... of mystery enacted in rock-cut temples beyond the Himalayas, whose fanatic priests, cold as death and as remorseless, in the reaction of their phrenzy of passion, foamed at the mouth and then sank into marble quiet, as with inner eyes they beheld the visions of the hellish powers ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... 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 ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... personal beauty, extreme simplicity, and a certain magnetic attractiveness. He believed himself, further, to be in direct and constant communication with supernatural things, and would be set down now as a religious fanatic, deeply tinged with superstition. His parson, too, in these days, would be thought little better, but at the time in which they lived both would probably be regarded with considerable veneration. We hear, in fact, that a chapel was finally erected over ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... very tyrant—a consummate Jack-in-office. As a gentleman of rather unbridled habits of life, and the author of "Broad Grins" and other works certainly paying small heed to the respectabilities, it had been hoped that he would deal leniently with his brother playwrights. But he carried to fanatic extravagance his devotion to the purity of the stage. Warned by earlier example, few dramas which could possibly be considered of a political complexion were now submitted for examination. Still the diction of the stage demanded a measure of liberty. But Mr. Colman would not ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the fashion lately with a few feeble-minded persons to undervalue the New England Puritans, as if they were nothing more than gloomy and narrow-minded fanatics. But all the charges brought against these large-minded and far-seeing men are precisely those which a really able fanatic, Joseph de Maistre, lays at the door of Protestantism. Neither a knowledge of human nature nor of history justifies us in confounding, as is commonly done, the Puritans of Old and New England, or the English Puritans of the third with those ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... when the English commodore reached the camp, a horrible event had occurred at El Arish. The grand vizier had collected around him an army of seventy or eighty thousand fanatic Mussulmans. The Turks were joined by the Mamluks. Ibrahim Bey, who had some time before retired to Syria, and Murad Bey, who had descended by a long circuit from the cataracts to the environs of ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... of it. His visit was, I believe, prompted by the affection he bears me, but he appeared utterly incapable of understanding the depth of feeling under which that letter was written. The editor's remarks were deeply trying to him. Friend B. seemed to think they were the ravings of a fanatic, and that the bare mention of my precious brother's name was a disgrace to his character, when coupled with mine in such a cause and such a paper, or rather in a cause advocated in such a way. I was so astonished and tried that I hardly knew what to say. I declined, ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... the part of Brutus to his country's Caesar and seems to represent the sternest type of republican virtue, is a repulsive fanatic. The horrible curse that he pronounces upon his daughter when he hears that she has been outraged is significant at once for his character and for the young Schiller's notion of tragic pathos. Throwing a black veil over her head he ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... he became effervescent. His belief was unlimited in the Head Centre, the Chief, in his demonic power and fertility of resource. That any evil should befall him!—Pascal snapped his thin fingers; while, with the inalienable optimism of the born fanatic, he proceeded to state hopeful conjecture as established fact, thereby doing homage to the spirit of delusion which so conspicuously ruled him even to his inmost thought. But a spell of cold weather in the winter of 1862 struck a little too shrewdly through Pascal's ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... this anniversary of the New State, we can look out with great pride upon a clean and wholesome land. With strong emotion, we can look upon the physical manifestation of our glorious principles—that only through self-effacement—through fanatic love for the state—can the individual come to complete physical and mental fruition. Upon this anniversary we see our enemies, both within and without, broken, and ...
— The Clean and Wholesome Land • Ralph Sholto
... undertaking, there were pressing reasons for the Emperor to get closer to Germany, in order to watch over that country and to see what was going on in France, where there had been a conspiracy whose leaders had been, for one day, in control of the capital. A fanatic, General Malet, had tossed a spark into Paris which could have started a fire, which, had he not encountered a man as far-seeing and energetic as Adjutant-major Laborde, might have put an end to ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... muttered. His voice was deep, resonant, vibrating like a bell. His eyes no longer suggested apology. They were strange, flashing; the eyes of a religious fanatic; and balefully they were ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... 290 In guerdon for their long delay. Few hours remain, and he hath need Of rest, to nerve for many a deed Of slaughter; but within his soul The thoughts like troubled waters roll.[ou] He stood alone among the host; Not his the loud fanatic boast To plant the Crescent o'er the Cross, Or risk a life with little loss, Secure in paradise to be 300 By Houris loved immortally: Nor his, what burning patriots feel, The stern exaltedness of zeal, Profuse of blood, untired in toil, When battling on the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... mine on the following day. After having stated to them the particulars of the dream itself and what were my own feelings in relation to it, they dissuaded me from my purpose, saying I might expose myself to contempt and vexation, or be taken up as a fanatic. Upon this I said no more, but anxiously watched the newspapers every ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... not a fact? Now answer me. And where, my lord, where were your thousand eyes, Not to discover Mortimer was false? That he, the Guise's tool, and Mary's creature, A raging papist, daring fanatic, Was come to free the Stuart, and to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... reckoning on his first voyage, by which he 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, cruel, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... all his house went in, They gazed, and said, 'Erratic!' 'A pleasant voyage to you, Noah! You canting, queer fanatic!' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... it was known for certain that the garrison would be withdrawn, Colonel Ross-Ellison commenced to put into practice his projected plans and arrangements. On the day that Mr. Dearman's coolies (after impassioned harangues by a blind Mussulman fanatic known as Ibrahim the Weeper, a faquir who had recently come over the Border to Gungapur and attained great influence; and by a Hindu professional agitator who had obtained a post at the mills in the guise of a harmless clerk) commenced rioting, beat Mr. Dearman to death with crowbars, picks, ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... discontents and seditions, by venomous and secret murmurings, and a dispersion of scurrilous pamphlets and libels against the Church and State; but especially against the Bishops; by which means, together with venomous and indiscreet sermons, the common people became so fanatic, as to believe the Bishops to be Antichrist, and the only obstructers of God's discipline! and at last some of them were given over to so bloody a zeal, and such other desperate delusions, as to find out a text in the Revelation of St. John, that Antichrist was to be overcome by the sword. ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... became 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, serene, and above all refined. Her ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... 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 rather fearfully ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... succeeded in making him angry; and he replied to my jokes by calling names—a phrase, by the way, which, forgetting his Watts' Hymns, and failing to consult his Johnson, he characterized as not English. I was, he said, a "shallow, pretending ninny;" an "impudent illiterate lad;" "a fanatic" and a "frantic person;" the "low underling of a faction," and "Peter the Hermit;" and, finally, as the sum-total of the whole he assured me that I stood in his "estimation the most ignoble and despised in the whole range of the human species." This ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... her views. In the present age of the world there is no method possible by which one can resist the whole tendency of modern thought and prevent himself from moving forward with it, unless it be active and violent controversy. No man can be a fanatic without opposition, either real or vividly fancied, upon which to stay his resolution, and it is equally difficult to maintain a stand at any given point of faith unless one has steadily to fight with vigor for the right ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... 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
... been prosperous and powerful, he might have been a sceptic; persecution and affliction made him a fanatic. Yet, true to that prominent characteristic of the old Hebrew race, which made them look to a Messiah only as a warrior and a prince, and which taught them to associate all their hopes and schemes with worldly victories and power, Almamen desired rather to advance, than to obey, his religion. ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Ottmachau, but in two hours he can be here any day; and looks into everything; sorry that the cannonade does not yet answer. And remnants of suburbs are still crackling into flame; high Country-Houses of Kreuzherren, of Jesuits; a fanatic people seemingly all set against us. 'If Neisse will not yield of good-will, needs is it must be beaten to powder,' wrote his Majesty to Jordan in these circumstances, as we read above. Roth is sorry to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... not what you say. Listen, my child. I am a gambler. Not the man who lavishes his fortune at the gaming-table for excitement's sake; not the fanatic who stakes his own earnings—perhaps the confided earnings of others—on a single coup. No, he is the man who loses,—whom the world deplores, pities, and forgives. I am the man who wins—whom the world ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... now, too. A spirit medium on the continent of Acaire, to the north, had produced a communication purporting to originate with a deceased Third Force Staff officer, now in the Spirit World. There was considerable detail, all ludicrous to Conn's professional ear. And a fanatic in one of the small towns on the west coast was quoting the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavadgita to prove that if Merlin were ever found, Divine vengeance in a spectacular form would fall not only on Poictesme ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... 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, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to her feet, "I wish he loved you less, then! No, there is no use saying things like that, Helen; he is narrow and bigoted,—he is a cruel fanatic." She did not see that Helen had half risen from her chair, and was watching her with gleaming eyes. "He actually prides himself on being able to make you suffer,—you read me that yourself out of his letter. He's a bad man, and I'm glad ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... 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 Bernard ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... figures broke away from each other, and the boy staggered backward and stood with the revolver still in his hand. He was a little sobered by the struggle, and a little weakened by it, pale and dangerous, with a fanatic light in his eyes. Some one who had an eye for danger signals, if the Colonel had not, had made his unobtrusive way forward, and joined him now. He was not the most formidable looking of allies, but he stood beside ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... I, even in the most critical situations, adhered to the truth more rigidly than other boys, we "little ones" owe it especially to our sister Paula, who was always a fanatic in its cause, and even now endures many an annoyance because she scorns the trivial "necessary fibs" deemed allowable ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... surmise—that the religious fanatic had offered up his wealth—or, rather, Madame Tibault's—in the shape of a material symbol of his consuming devotion? Stranger things have been done in the name of worship. Was it not possible that the lost thousands were molded into that lustrous ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... retained its vigour. The face, from which the long black hair was brushed straight back, was ghastly white. Out of it, deep set beneath great shaggy, overhanging brows, blazed the fierce, restless eyes of a fanatic. The huge, thin-lipped mouth seemed to have petrified itself into a savage snarl. He gave Joan the idea, as he stood there glaring round him, of a hunted beast ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... "In adopting the legend concerning the birth of the Founder of the Church of Kilmallie, the author has endeavored to trace the effects which such a belief was likely to produce, in a barbarous age, on the person to whom it related. It seems likely that he must have become a fanatic or an impostor, or that mixture of both which forms a more frequent character than either of them, as existing separately. In truth, mad persons are frequently more anxious to impress upon others a faith in their visions, than they are themselves confirmed ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... his helplessness was not so much fear before the fanatic fury of this man he had outraged, although he had a clear notion that his position was not enviably secure, but a ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... 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
... (March 2d) 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 ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... come 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 ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... and disappear into the evening. Those who are marking time around the obscure fanatic are growling, "He's not only bad, he's mad, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... "Peace, fanatic! Who else may till unwholesome fields, but these? And as these beings are, so shall they remain; 'tis right and righteous! Maramma champions it!—I swear it! The first blow struck for them, dissolves the union of Vivenza's ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... this day that I committed murder—no one will dare accuse me of cowardice, no one will dare say that I could not perform my painful duty to the end. From the beginning till the end I remained firm and unbribable; and though a bugbear, a fanatic, a dark horror to some people, I may awaken in others a heroic dream of the ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... master's gestures, he looked at the other bowls flying through the air, or rolling along the ground. You might have taken him for the weird and watchful genii of the cochonnet. He said nothing; and the bowl-players—the most fanatic men that can be encountered among the sectarians of any faith—had never asked the reason of his dogged silence; in fact, the most observing of them thought him ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... two hemispheres for three weeks past. She was not realistically like her portraits. She was a little, thin, pale, obviously nervous woman, of any age from thirty-five to fifty, with fair untidy hair, and pale grey-blue eyes that showed the dreamer, the idealist and the harsh fanatic. She looked as though a moderate breeze would have overthrown her, but she also looked, to the enlightened observer, as though she would recoil before no cruelty and no suffering in pursuit of her vision. The blind dreaming force ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... finds itself alone in a terrible world, afraid of the grass. It has brought forth poetry and religion in order to explain matters; it will bring them forth again. It matters not one atom how often the lulls of materialism and scepticism occur; they are always broken by the reappearance of a fanatic. They have come in our time: they have been broken ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... forth from the ark, and return across every sea with the olive of every land. Shall objects like these be endangered by the impatience of petty ambition, the promptings of sectional interest, or the goadings of fanatic hate? Shall the good of the whole be surrendered to the voracious demands of the few? Shall class interests control the great policy of our country, and the voice of reason be drowned in the clamor of causeless excitement? If so, not otherwise, we may agree with ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... the population than in any state except Rome, were more intransigent than any ecclesiastical body in the world. The Italian priest of old days, whatever else might be said about him, was rarely a fanatic. The very nickname 'Ultramontane' given by Italians to the religious extremists north of the Alps, shows how foreign such excesses were to their own temperaments. But the Ultramontane spirit had already invaded Piedmont, and was embraced by its ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... other alternative was left him. And here we believe Mr. F. W. Newman to be singularly at fault in pronouncing this attempt of Jesus upon Jerusalem a foolhardy attempt. According to Mr. Newman, no man has any business to rush upon certain death, and it is only a crazy fanatic who will do so. [21] But such "glittering generalizations" will here help us but little. The historic data show that to go to Jerusalem, even at the risk of death, was absolutely necessary to the realization of Jesus' Messianic project. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... doctrine; nor can he keep on giving friendly words to Satan and his minions. A teacher who remains silent when errors are taught, and nevertheless pretends to be a true teacher, is worse than an open fanatic and by his hypocrisy does greater damage than a heretic. Nor can he be trusted. He is a wolf and a fox, a hireling and a servant of his belly, and ready to despise and to sacrifice doctrine, Word, faith, Sacrament, churches, and schools. He is ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... would not desert the man, Mahomet Achmet, whom his cracked brain accepted as a prophet from Heaven, for any patriotic consideration, for he was a wrong-headed Irishman as well as a fanatic, and a man with a grievance to boot, and would glory in drawing his sword against England. And if he joined him and sought his aid, Harry Forsyth might find himself in the awkward fix of acquiescing, if not taking part, in war ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... Rochelle. There he had better take four men into his service, for in these days it is by no means safe to ride through France unattended; especially when one is of the reformed religion. The roads abound with disbanded soldiers and robbers, while in the villages a fanatic might, at any time, bring on a religious tumult. I have many correspondents at La Rochelle, and will write to one asking him to select four stout fellows, who showed their courage in the last war, and can be relied on for good and faithful service. I will also ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... tragedy with a touch of fatalistic horror,—all those qualities that are found scattered through his sonatas and symphonies and his various operas—all the qualities that are combined in "Don Giovanni," are the qualities of Mozart's own nature, always excepting the ruthlessness and the fanatic libertinism of ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... another, made war impossible, or 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 at Sarajeve, had ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... 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
... gave way to ungovernable rage, and cursed Shefford as a religious fanatic might have cursed the most debased sinners. Shefford heard with the blood beating, strangling the pulse in his ears. Somehow this missionary had learned his secret—most likely from the Mormons in Stonebridge. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... himself in the presence of insolent victors and exasperated subjects. In 1262 the inhabitants of Vladimir, of Suzdal, of Rostof, rose against the collectors of the Tartar impost. The people of Yaroslavl slew a renegade named Zozimus, a former monk, who had become a Moslem fanatic. Terrible reprisals were sure to follow. Alexander set out with presents for the Horde at the risk of leaving his head there. He had likewise to excuse himself for having refused a body of auxiliary Russians to the Mongols, wishing at least to spare the blood and religious scruples of his subjects. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... regarded him only as a wild enthusiast, a fanatic, or a public enemy. The present generation sees in him the bold and honest reformer, the man of original, self-poised, heroic will, inspired by a vision of universal justice, made actual in the practice ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... my poor friend. I came here to congratulate you for having regained your liberty, and for belonging again to the noble and only happy order of bachelors; but instead of hearing you rejoice, I find in you a philanthropic fanatic, and an enthusiastic ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... education in a village school in Perthshire where the scholars paid a penny a week, he was a leading member of the Scots' Kirk in Covent Garden, and had drawn his political education not at all from godless French philosophers, but from the Protestant fanatic, Lord George Gordon, and from Dr. Price's book on the American War. He gathered his own friends together to found his society, and nine of them met for the first time in the "Bell" tavern in Exeter Street in January, 1792. "They had finished their daily labour and met there ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... room where we had the inevitable cup of South African coffee. I was prepared to find a fanatic and fire-eater. Instead I faced a thin, undersized man who looked anything but a general and statesman. Put him against the background of a small New England town and you would take him for an American country lawyer. He resembles the student more than the soldier and, like ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... 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
... avoid the other. Even Bishop Ken said of him that he showed zeal to make the schism incurable.[44] A good man, and a scholar of rare erudition, he possessed nevertheless the true temper of a bigot. In middle life he had been brought into close acquaintance with the fanatic extravagances of Scotch Covenanters, his aversion to which might seem to have taught him, not the excellence of a more temperate spirit, but the desirability of rushing toward similar extremes in an opposite ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... "Fanatic!" laughed Mary. "Well, whether we go there or not, it's evident we must get back before October the first, and it's ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... more determined fists pounded down the walls that were building themselves up around American youth in the cigarette industry. He was militant from morning till night in his crusade against cigarettes. Some of his friends thought he was a fanatic. He even lost friends because of his uncompromising antagonism to ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... of Burke's attack upon the Revolution does not belong to political philosophy. No man is more responsible than he for the temper which drew England into war. He came to write rather with the zeal of a fanatic waging a holy war than in the temper of a statesman confronted with new ideas. Yet even the Letters on a Regicide Peace (1796) have flashes of the old, incomparable insight; and they show that even ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... however, was no ordinary occurrence. In general the Puritan spirit seemed to be more effectually cowed at this conjuncture than at any moment before or since. The Tory pamphleteers boasted that not one fanatic dared to move tongue or pen in defence of his religious opinions. Dissenting ministers, however blameless in life, however eminent for learning and abilities, could not venture to walk the streets for fear of outrages, which were not only not repressed, but encouraged, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... swaggering f. Diapasonal f. Full-bulked f. Resolute f. Gallant and vainglorious f. Hieroglyphical f. Gorgeous and gaudy f. Authentic f. Continual and intermitting f. Worthy f. Rebasing and roundling f. Precious f. Prototypal and precedenting f. Fanatic f. Prating f. Fantastical f. Catechetic f. Symphatic f. Cacodoxical f. Panic f. Meridional f. Limbecked and distilled f. Nocturnal f. Comportable f. Occidental f. Wretched and heartless f. Trifling f. Fooded f. Astrological and figure-flinging ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... revolution in the history of faith and mental healing as this. He anticipated the method and supplied the material, but he either did not or could not popularize it. He was not selfish enough to monopolize it, not shrewd enough to commercialize it, and, maybe, not fanatic enough to make it a cult. He was more interested in his own speculations than in making converts and without one of those accidents which become turning points in a movement nothing would have probably come of his work save its somewhat ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... thus appear, that whilst every thing upon the surface of society wore a calm and peaceful aspect; whilst not one note of preparation was heard to warn the devoted inhabitants of woe and death, a gloomy fanatic was revolving in the recesses of his own dark, bewildered, and overwrought mind, schemes of indiscriminate massacre to the whites. Schemes too fearfully executed as far as his fiendish band proceeded ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... couldn't. 'I'm at my wit's end what to do with you, Le Breton,' he said kindly one morning to Ernest: 'but how on earth I'm to manage anything, I can't imagine. For my own part, you know, though your conduct about that poor man Schurz (a well-meaning harmless fanatic, I dare say) was really a public scandal—from the point of view of parents I mean, my dear fellow, from the point of view of parents—I should almost be inclined to keep you on here in spite of it, and brave the public opinion of Pilbury Regis, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... the call and from her window looked with half- closed, catlike eyes upon the semi-naked, young fanatic. ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... have been regarded as requiring a sacrifice 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 ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... Daburon was sure to 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 ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... a mere fancy, a figment of some fanatic's brain;" and Ellis Whitford rejected the idea in a voice ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... stress on the element of the fanatic in Vane's nature; and in a later section of the History Clarendon speaks of it emphatically: ... 'Vane being a man not to be described by any character of religion; in which he had swallowed some ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... opinion or not, with equal brilliance, plausibility and success, according to his desire to dispose of you or the subject. He either finessed with the ethical basis of his intellect or had none. This made him unintelligible to the average man, unforgivable to the fanatic and a god to ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... man was lost once more in Calhoun the visionary, the fanatic statesman. He summed up, as though to himself, something of the situation which then existed ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... surely bound in a circle, breathed upon by some arrogant breath of fanaticism, commanded by some horrid power. She looked at the scorpions and felt a sort of pity for them. From time to time the bowing fanatic glanced at them through his hair out of the corners of his eyes, licked his lips, shook his shoulders, and uttered a long howl, thrilling with the note of greed. The tomtoms pulsed faster and faster, louder and louder, and all the men began ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... and, besides, he has been a great fanatic formerly, and now has got a habit of swearing, that he may be ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... he refused to say anything except about what he had done, and freely took upon himself the whole responsibility. He was so warped by his religious training as to have become a fatalist as well as a fanatic. "All our actions," he said to one who visited him in prison, "even all the follies that led to this disaster, were decreed to happen ages before the world was made." Perverted Calvinistic philosophy is the key which unlocks the mystery of Brown's life ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... one of the largest ever held in Orham. The little house was crowded. Old friends, who had drifted away from the fanatic in his latter days, came back to pay tribute to the strong man whom they had known and loved. There was some discussion among the captains as to who should preach the funeral sermon. Elsie had left this question to Captain Eri for settlement, ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... utter cynics in their criticism. Thackeray expressed this well when he made Pendennis' mother, who worshipped her son as a god, yet assume that he would go wrong as a man. She underrated his virtue, though she overrated his value. The devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic. Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... 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, and constantly undermining the moral life of the nation; against this citadel ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... four volumes, for which he received the sum of L200; and in this and the following year, he produced two works of fiction, entitled, "The Three Perils of Man," and "The Three Perils of Women," which together yielded him L300. In 1824, he published "The Confessions of a Fanatic;" and, in 1826, he gave to the world his long narrative poem of "Queen Hynde." The last proved unequal to his former poetical efforts. In 1826, Mr J. G. Lockhart proceeded to London to edit the Quarterly Review, taking along with him, as his assistant, Robert Hogg, a son of the Shepherd's elder ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... mystery. Slipping 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 ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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
... that he had not always found the Socialists so proud, but kept the thought to himself, not wishing to hurt Hessel's feelings, who seemed to be an honest fanatic. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... stood a long, narrow, thatched roof supported on poles. Beneath this, the Captain told me, were the beehives. They proved later to be in charge of a mild-eyed religious fanatic who believed ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... catchword. Jeff used it as glibly as the women of the clubs. The pot was going to seethe and bubble over and some demagogue—he did not mention Weedie—was going to stir it, and the Addington of our fathers would be lost. The business men looked at him with the slow smile of the sane for the fanatic and answered from the fatuous optimism of the man who expects the world to last at least his time. Some of them said something about "this great country", as if it were chartered by the Almighty to stand the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... characteristic difference in point of religious convictions, which may go some way in the same direction. The followers of Islam appear on the whole to take the tenets of their faith at their face value—servile, intolerant and fanatic—whereas the Russian official class may perhaps without undue reproach be considered to have on the whole outlived the superstitious conceits to which they yield an expedient pro forma observance. So that when worse comes to worst, and the Turk finds himself at length ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... going a heap longer if you laid off Sundays," advised Griffith. "I'm no fanatic; but no man can keep at it day and night, this ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... persuaded to join the chase. Outram leading, the whole party pushed on, under a severe fire, to the very topmost pinnacle of the rocks, where was flying the consecrated banner, green and white, of the fanatic Mussulmans. This was captured, the standard-bearer was shot, thirty or forty killed, and about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... believe that had not the Pope and the priests and monks interfered, and worked up some of our fanatic nobles and the ignorant populace to persecute their fellow-countrymen, they might have lived together on friendly terms; and, for the life of me, I cannot see why people should not be allowed to worship God according to the dictates of their consciences," ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... more. Excitement becomes akin to anxiety. If the Emperor did leave Fontainebleau when the last courier said that he did, he should certainly be here by now. There are strange whispers, strange waves of evil reports that spread through the waiting crowd: "A royalist fanatic had shot at the Emperor! the Emperor ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... Pierre de Lavaur, who dared preach Calvinism in the streets of Nismes, was hanged and burnt. So had the score of judicial murders been increasing year by year, till it had to be, as all evil scores have to be in this world, paid off with interest, and paid off especially against the ignorant and fanatic monks who for a whole generation, in every university and school in France, had been howling down sound science, as well as sound religion; and at Montpellier in 1560-61, their debt was paid them in a very ugly ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... faith, Emmanuel College, and they were on intimate terms with many of the men who were the creators of the outer and inner life of the Commonwealth, but in their intellectual sympathies they went neither with the sectaries of the time—"the squalid sluttery of fanatic conventicles," as S. P. puts it—nor with the prevailing Puritan theology. They read Calvin and Beza with diligence, at least Whichcote did, but their thought did not move along the track which the great Genevan had constructed. They discovered another way of approach which made ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... outraged but non-existent morality is doing them or anybody else any good. A prominent business man was put in a cell yesterday; a political boss arrives to-day; a college graduate, a judge, and a religious fanatic are expected next week. But business, politics, the Four Hundred, the Law and religion are no better ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... believe that Wagner as a boy of fourteen had a fully developed character and clearly foresaw the Ring and Tristan as things before him, only waiting to be accomplished. Richard was still a boy, impulsive to the point of madness, a hotheaded fanatic, with his character still in the making, his artistic purposes neither defined nor capable of being defined. He was not yet a great man. But he had the makings of a great man in him; and in the meantime ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... London, May, 1570, all London was roused by a papal bull against Elizabeth being found nailed on the gates of the bishop's palace. It declared her crown forfeited and her people absolved from their oaths of allegiance. The fanatic maniac, Felton, was soon discovered, and hung on a gallows ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... was displeased about it, and he ordered them to 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 series.... Are we ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... ties of affection, of which, indeed, they were incapable, yet acknowledged the sway of this superior evil genius, and gave him a uniform and ready obedience, in which there was something almost fanatic. He was their deliverer in all desperate cases; and when the weariness of confinement under our chilly vaults began to fill them with ennui, his mind, brutal even in jest, would cure them by arranging for their ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... of brilliant young men who represented intellectual Liberalism; but 'they were men who meant to become judges, members of Parliament, or even bishops, and nothing in their social atmosphere had stimulated the deep resentment against social injustice which makes the fanatic or the enthusiast.' As a sample of Whiggism Mr. Stephen takes Mackintosh, who, on the subject of the French Revolution, stood half-way between Burke's holy horror of a diabolic outburst and the applause of root-and-branch Radicals. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... acknowledged the introduction with his deepest bow. He was dazzled. He had come to this dreary place to talk politics. But now this was out of the question. And he began explaining to the Princess; Mila he had fancied was some slattern waiting on the old fanatic of a prince. He told Mila this in a few words, and soon the pair laughed and chatted. In the meantime Karospina, who had finished the letter, began to pace the apartment. Apparently he had forgotten ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... have been a man of some discretion, and to have seen that the girl's sensibilities were getting into a dangerously excited state. Before he could quiet her down, he fell ill, and was succeeded by another priest, who was a fanatic. You will understand the sort of interest he took in the girl, and the way in which he worked on her feelings, when I tell you that she announced it as her decision, after having been nearly two years at the school, to end her days in a convent! You may well stare! Miss Gwilt, in the character ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... been a tendency to utilize the gathering together of children in schools for purposes irrelevant to schooling proper, but of some real or fancied benefit. Wherever there is a priestly religion, the lower type of religious fanatic will always look to the schools as a means of doctrinal dissemination; will always be seeking to replace efficiency by orthodoxy upon staff and management; and, with an unconquerable, uncompromising persistency, will seek perpetually ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... They feel they may compulsively reveal the darker side of their nature, confess their hostility or relate information they would never voluntarily divulge to anyone. This is the real danger they see in hypnosis. To protect themselves from it, they attack it. It is much like the fanatic vice crusader who militantly attacks sin in order to alleviate his own feelings of guilt stemming from the fact that ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... up proudly, and a flush of resentment stole over his face. But the Moslem fanatic, unconscious now of anything but his reminiscences of the past, went ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... preachers, ever preaching, Fill'd with eloquence and power:— One is old, with locks of white, Skinny as an anchorite; And he preaches every hour With a shrill fanatic voice, And a bigot's fiery scorn:— "Backward! ye presumptuous nations; Man to misery is born! Born to drudge, and sweat, and suffer— Born to labour and to pray; Backward!' ye presumptuous ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... difference was this: that even in this Catholic reign the property of the Catholic Church could not be restored. The very fact that Mary was a fanatic, and yet this act of justice was beyond the wildest dreams of fanaticism—that is the point. The very fact that she was angry enough to commit wrongs for the Church, and yet not bold enough to ask for the rights of the ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... in happiness a humility deeper and nobler, purer and wider, than sorrow can ever procure. There is a certain humility that ranks with parasitic virtues, such as sterile self-sacrifice, arbitrary chastity, blind submission, fanatic renouncement, penitence, false shame, and many others, which have from time immemorial turned aside from their course the waters of human morality, and forced them into a stagnant pool, around which our memory still lingers. Nor do I speak of ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... discuss these gruesome possibilities, although this was not Drew's fault. I would not listen to him; and so he would be silent about them until convinced that the furtherance of our careers as airmen demanded additional unpleasant imaginings. There was something of the Hindoo fanatic in him; or perhaps it was the outcropping of the stern spirit of his New England forbears. But when he talked of the pleasant side of the adventures before us, it was more than compensation for all the rest. Then he would make me ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... for many years openly sneered at by many of his professional brethren as "a cold-water fanatic." Since his views are now being rapidly adopted by progressive medical men all over the civilized world, it may be that soon those physicians who cling to alcohol will deserve the soubriquet of "alcohol ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... 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 opponents or to his old friend ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... possibly precludes some other. A man cannot be all things at once; "the philosopher and the lady-killer," as James merrily remarks, "could not very well keep house in the same tenement of clay." But a strong character need not necessarily mean a narrow one, nor need a determined will be the will of a fanatic. The self may be—in the case of rare geniuses it has been—diverse in its interests, activities, and sympathies, yet unified and consistent in action. A character may be various without being confused; versatility is not synonymous with chaos. A man's interests and activities ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman |
