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Fanatic   Listen
noun
Fanatic  n.  A person affected by excessive enthusiasm, particularly on religious subjects; one who indulges wild and extravagant notions of religion. "There is a new word, coined within few months, called fanatics, which, by the close stickling thereof, seemeth well cut out and proportioned to signify what is meant thereby, even the sectaries of our age." "Fanatics are governed rather by imagination than by judgment."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fanatic" Quotes from Famous Books



... death, which their iniquity would procure." In two brief years Knox was himself publicly expressing his own thirst for the Queen's death, and praying for a Jehu or a Phinehas, slayers of idolaters, such as Mary Tudor. If any fanatic had taken this hint, and the life of Mary Tudor, Catholics would have said that Knox's "iniquity procured" the murder, and they would have had fair excuse for ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... 'Well spoken! Such would have been my own words had I been in your place. Moreover, they are true, and the robe becomes you well. Yet presume not too far, girl, seeing that Byzantium is no longer a village, and Egypt has some fanatic Moslem for a Pharaoh, who thinks little ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... to say for the best to this uncomfortable fanatic, this unreasonable literalist. When believers have to formularize in set words their hazy notions of the feelings and conditions of souls in bliss, they make but a lame business of it; and nothing that the dear woman could propound, keeping on the side of orthodox spirituality, carried ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... 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 refinement was ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... answered the questions, they do not recover till violently shaken by other people; nor can they remember the replies they have given. If consulted a second or third time upon the same point, they will make use of expressions totally different; perhaps they speak by the means of fanatic and ignorant spirits. These gifts are usually conferred upon them in dreams: some seem to have sweet milk or honey poured on their lips; others fancy that a written schedule is applied to their mouths and on awaking they ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis

... had to interfere. He dispatched a rescript to Alexandria, enjoining the bishop, Theophilus, to destroy the Serapion; and the great library, which had been collected by the Ptolemies, and had escaped the fire of Julius Caesar, was by that fanatic dispersed. ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... Fanatic lovers of the hound Scorn hygienic laws, And though their dogs should snap all round You must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various

... paragraphs. Leader of Islamic Caliphate shot to death in Basra ... leaving Parliament Building for his palace outside the city ... fanatic, identified as an Egyptian named Mohammed Noureed ... old American submachine-gun ... two guards killed and a third seriously wounded ... seized by infuriated mob and stoned to death on ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper

... and fear. To this general state of affairs came to be added, about the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century, incidents best calculated to aggravate the evil. Hakem, khalif of Egypt from 996 to 1021, persecuted the Christians, especially at Jerusalem, with all the violence of a fanatic and all the capriciousness of a despot. He ordered them to wear upon their necks a wooden cross five pounds in weight; he forbade them to ride on any animal but mules or asses; and, without assigning any motive for his acts, he confiscated ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... distance 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

... open day brought its own distractions. There was always Bow Street wherein to loaf, and the study of the criminal law lost none of its excitement from the reward offered outside for the bald-headed fanatic who sat placidly within. And the love of music was Peace's constant solace. Whatever treasures he might discard in a hurried flight, he never left a fiddle behind, and so vast became his pilfered collection that he had to borrow an empty ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... Montagu through chattering teeth. "How can you deny that you're sitting here with me in this restaurant? I forgive you—I love you, and I forgive you, but, thank God, I see through you at last! You're a fanatic, a poor, frenzied maniac on this subject, and you've morbidly spied on and studied me as a typical case of it; through your devilish understanding and divination you've guessed at that conversation between ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... religious fanatic denounces coffee in Cairo and leads a mob against the coffee houses, many of which are wrecked. The city is divided into two parties, for and against coffee; but the chief judge, after consultation with the doctors, causes coffee to be served to the meeting, drinks ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... mistake. They fight bravely as it is, without much inducement beyond patriotism and a noble cause. But the 'secesh' soldier has more than this—he has the desperation of a traitor in a bad cause, of a fanatic and of a natural savage. It is no slur at the patriotism of our troops to say that they would fight better for such a splendid ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... look like a fanatic, Dave told himself. Crazy or not, he took this business of the hatching egg seriously. But you could never be sure about anyone who joined a cult. "What is your egg going ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey

... that the action seems almost to be the result of natural environment. Perhaps the most striking illustration of this harmony between scene and incident is found in Old Mortality, where Morton approaches the cave of the old Covenanter, and where the spiritual terror inspired by the fanatic's struggle with imaginary fiends is paralleled by the physical terror of a gulf and a roaring flood spanned by a slippery tree trunk. A second illustration of the same harmony of scene and incident is found ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... contrast between the Germany of a hundred years ago and the Germany of to-day. But "Onuphrius" is Hoffmann Gautierised, German "Franciolated," a Walpurgisnacht softened by Morgane la Fee. "Elias Wildmanstadius," one of the earliest, remains one of the most agreeable, pictures of a fanatic of the mediaeval. The overture and the finale, both pieces in which the great motto "Trinq!" is perhaps a very little abused, nevertheless contain a considerable amount of wisdom, and the last not a little wit.[208] But the central story Celle-ci et Celle-la, which fills nearly ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... Was levelled when fanatic Brooke The fair cathedral stormed and took, But thanks to Heaven and good St. Chad A guerdon meet the spoiler had (c. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... Heaven's elect for the Dragon Throne, into the iconoclastic propagator of the worship of a single God, and the destroyer of the mass of idolatry stored in the hearts and venerated in the temples of the Chinese people for countless ages. Whether Hung was merely an intriguer or a fanatic, he could not help feeling some gratitude to those who so conveniently echoed his pretensions to the Throne at the same time that they pleaded extenuating circumstances for acts of cruelty and brigandage ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... itself, but which was made the excuse for increased stringency in the suppression of liberal sentiments throughout Germany. This was the assassination of Von Kotzebue, the dramatic author, at Manheim, at the hands of a fanatic by the name of Sand. Kotzebue had some employment under the Russian government, and was supposed to be a propagandist of the views of the Czar, who had lately become exceedingly hostile to all emancipating ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... surmise; you are a fanatic on drink, and are not capable of exercising sound judgement when you come to that," John replied ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... is the story of the amazing reign of this one man, Joseph F. Smith, the Mormon Prophet, a religious fanatic of bitter mind, who claims that he has been divinely ordained to exercise the awful authority of God on earth over all the affairs of all mankind, and who plays the anointed despot in Utah and the surrounding states as cruelly as a Sultan ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... powers to foment rebellion by violently denouncing the State authorities, who had refused to allow a pastoral of the Christian Bishop of San Salvador, hostile to the laws, to be read in the churches. Having been put into a state of frenzy by one Palacios, a canon of the cathedral, a fanatic mob revolted, liberated prisoners, murdered generals in command, massacred numbers of the best citizens, set fire to the city with kerosene, and destroyed over one million dollars' worth of property. After this theological revolt had been put down, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... 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

... good points; they're so refreshingly sure of themselves and their views, while the rest of us don't believe in anything. You can't be a fanatic without being thorough, and in renouncing the world and the flesh you may gain more than a passable figure. Among other things, the ascetic life means straight shooting, steady hands, and an eye you can ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... "Burne's a fanatic," he said to Tom, "and he's dead wrong and, I'm inclined to think, just an unconscious pawn in the hands of anarchistic publishers and German-paid rag wavers—but he haunts ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... or an evangelist among those whom his influence led to devote themselves to the one cause of their country's regeneration. No firmer faith, no nobler disinterestedness, ever animated the saint or the patriot; and if in Mazzini there was also something of the visionary and the fanatic, the force with which he grasped the two vital conditions of Italian revival—the expulsion of the foreigner and the establishment of a single national Government—proves him to have been a thinker of genuine political ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... enemy wavered, then turned and began to slowly retreat, hesitating every now and again, even in face of the withering rifle fire, as though half-minded to renew their attack. Some turned and shook their fists, while others, with the fanatic's unconquerable spirit and reckless valour, rushed back singly, only to fall long before ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... after them. "If only that child weren't a little fanatic and Eloise in such an erratic, wayward state, ready to seize upon anything novel, it would be all very well," she mused, "for Dr. Ballard seems to find Jewel amusing, and it might be a point of common interest. As it is, if ever I wished any one in ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... and that, at the very time Wolfe reconciled it to his conscience to commit the murder of his fellow creature, he would have moved out of his path for a worm. Assassination, indeed, seemed to him justice; and a felon's execution the glory of martyrdom. And yet, O Fanatic, thou didst anathematize the Duellist as the Man of ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... life was being dragged out of him. Feverishly then he buried himself in his tasks and his books, he went on cramming himself with theories until he reached the bursting-point and wanted to go out on fire with mission, almost a fanatic, an Isaiah to shake the city with invective and prophesy change. What could he do to spread the tidings, the news? The time had come to find an outlet for the overbearing flood within him. And then one evening in the Park like a flash came the plan. He must go among the poor, he must get to know ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... library there. But the Lord Primate Usher was inferior to none I have named among the clergy for rare MSS., a great part of which, being brought out of Ireland, and left his son-in-law, Sir Timothy Tyrill, was disposed of to give bread to that incomparable Prelate during the late fanatic war. Such as remained yet at Dublin were preserved, and by a public purse restored and placed in the college library of that city. . . . I forbear to name the late Earl of Bristol's and his kinsman's, Sir Kenelm Digby's, libraries, of more pompe than intrinsic value, as chiefly ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... of the Epistles, which were formerly felt to be so objectionable, are yet to be found here in all their unmitigated folly. Ignatius is still the same anti-evangelical formalist, the same puerile boaster, the same dreaming mystic, and the same crazy fanatic. These are weighty charges, and yet they can be substantiated. But we must enter into details, that we may fairly exhibit the spirit, and expose the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... moments!" The phrase was to become very familiar to her on the lips of others, even more in her own thoughts. "His moments!" It implied a sort of intermittent inspiration, as though he were some ancient prophet or mediaeval fanatic through whose mouth Heaven spoke sometimes, leaving him for the rest to his own low and carnal nature. The phrase meant at once a plenitude of inspiration and a rarity of it. Not days, nor hours, but moments were seemingly what his friends ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... the wife of one Lunel, a dealer in iron. A Spanish chaplain, belonging to the army of the Emperor Charles V, passing through Paris in order to repair to Flayers, threw himself in this man's way, and worked on his mind till he had made him a complete fanatic: "Your king," said the friar, "protects Lutheranism in Germany, and will soon introduce it into France. Be revenged on him and your wife, by serving religion. Communicate to him that disease for which no certain remedy is yet known."—"And how am I to give it to him?" replied ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... Mrs. Stanton which not only pointed out how often the Republicans had failed women but reminded Garrison how he had welcomed into his antislavery ranks anyone and everyone who believed in his ideas, "a motley crew it was." She recalled the label of fanatic which had been attached to him, how he had been threatened and pelted with rotten eggs for expressing his unpopular ideas and for burning the Constitution which he declared sanctioned slavery. With such a background, she told him, he should be able to recognize her right ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... lasted about four years. During this time he seemed to be the most hated man in the world; reproach, revenge, and hatred rolled over his head like breaking waves. He was called a deceiver, a fanatic, a schismatic, a traitor. He was pursued by malicious rumors to blacken his name, and by armed men to shed his blood. Yet he continued steadfastly on his way. Winter storms and summer rains could not abate his ardor. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... stunned, as these words of indignation and scorn flowed from the lips of Mr. Gurney. He made no attempt to reply, but grew angry as he realized that the latter was well aware of the active part he had taken in the plots of the rum party; finally, cursing him as an old fanatic, he walked rapidly away. ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... this group of declaiming judges, towering above the masses, he saw Samuel, the man of contradictions, going whither the Lord drove him, achieving work which he was destined to overthrow, creating the monarchy which he reprobated, consecrating a fanatic king—a sort of madman, who passes across behind the transparent sheet of history with frantic and threatening gestures; and then Samuel has to overwhelm this extraordinary Saul under the burthen of his curses, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... XVIII reckoning up the felicities of the eighteenth century, and the unhappiness of the nineteenth. Seated in the centre of the seesaw, which he knew so well how to balance by his own weight, he contemplates at one end of it the fanatic ignorance of a lay brother, the apathy of a serf, the shining armor on the horses of a banneret; he thinks he hears the cry, "France and Montjoie-Saint-Denis!" But he turns round, he smiles as he sees the haughty look of a manufacturer, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... persists? Why, then he must be got rid of. Some woman doubtless exists, handsome, young, and clever, who has a grievance against the duke; and some fanatic can be found ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... the common centre of religious worship, the Imperial fanatic attempted to remove the Ancilia, the Palladium, [54] and all the sacred pledges of the faith of Numa. A crowd of inferior deities attended in various stations the majesty of the god of Emesa; but his court was still imperfect, till a female of distinguished rank was ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... drink—yes, you too, Solly." These last words were addressed to a ghost-like man with a long white beard and insane eyes, who had glided into the store. He was recognized by all present under the name of "Solly," an abbreviation of Solitarius. The demented fanatic sadly ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... from external suffering, prevents him (the Irishman) from becoming a fanatic and a misanthrope, and reconciles ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... protestant and sings a ballad of the Huguenots to the young people, a song wild and fanatic. They laugh at his impotent wrath, when a lady is announced to Count Nevers, in whom Raoul recognizes the lady ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... changes its habits, customs, and ideas, so Auction in a few months has developed surprising innovations, and evolved theories that only yesterday would have seemed to belong to the heretic or the fanatic. The expert bidder of last Christmas would find himself a veritable Rip Van Winkle, should he awake in the midst ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work

... don't dare do anything else," Montano said, his face taking on the fanatic's light, "but some of us dare do something, some of us aren't going to sit forever and let them strangle all humanity, hold us down, let us die! It's war, Bart, war for economic survival. Do you suppose the Lhari would hesitate to kill anyone if we did anything to hurt ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... impressed 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

... that the great talents which we have acknowledged, and which doubtless all will agree with us in acknowledging, the leaders of the Southern rebellion to possess, only enhance the magnitude of their offense, and serve to illustrate with greater force the enormity of their purposes. That a brainless fanatic like Lord George Gordon, or the Neapolitan fisherman, Massaniello, should stir up tremendous agitation, may be matter for critical study, but is hardly a subject of wonder. But that men gifted with exalted ability, undoubted caution, well-balanced intellect, and apparently refined reason, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... no reason to suppose that the fondness for this diversion abated, except during the short 'trump or triumph of the fanatic suit'—in the hard times of Old Oliver—when undoubtedly cards were styled 'the devil's books.' But, indeed, by that time they had become an engine of much fraud and destruction; so that one of the early acts of Charles II.'s reign inflicted large penalties on those ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... Treat me as a Corybant, a fanatic: and do you go forward on this road of yours. Finish the journey in accordance with the view you had of these matters at the beginning of it. Only, be assured that my judgment on it will remain unchanged. Reason still ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater

... only other course open to her, to betray her husband and rob him of that, the loss of which might ruin him, this needed not courage only, not devotion only, but a hardness proof against reproaches as well as against punishment. And the Countess was no fanatic. No haze of bigotry glorified the thing she contemplated, or dressed it in colours other than its own. Even while she acknowledged the necessity of the act and its ultimate righteousness, even while she owned the obligation which lay upon her to perform it, she saw it as he would see it, and ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... itself. No 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

... oasis which long I coveted, but which fell to my greatest enemy because he had a few more piastres than I—and maybe a little more diplomacy—a man who would kill me if he could but find the excuse, the moral breeder of camels, the fanatic son of Solomon, Hahmed the great, Hahmed ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... stirring up people in rags, mass force of a very different kind. Here was a sculptor socialist who openly bragged that he'd had a hand in filling Union Square one day with a seething mass of unemployed, and then when some poor crazed fanatic threw a bomb, our socialist friend, as he himself smilingly put it, never once stopped running ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... his wife as soon as they were seated in their carriage, "Dr. Fairfax is a narrow-minded extremist, a fanatic. What right had he to bring those street wanderers into the church this morning? The place for them is down at the mission. Do I not give liberally toward its support? To be sure, such as they need the Gospel, but I want them to stay where ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright

... fanatic!" said Santerre, spurning the table as he rose in his passion, and upsetting it into the middle of the room; and then he walked up and down the salon with rapid strides, trying to induce himself to give orders for the immediate execution of the ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... of an ordinance which was to serve as a sign and a seal of His grace throughout all generations. His character is as sublime as it is original. It has no parallel in the history of the human family. The impostor is cunning, the demagogue is turbulent, and the fanatic is absurd; but the conduct of Jesus Christ is uniformly gentle and serene, candid, courteous, and consistent. Well, indeed, may His name be called Wonderful. "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world know him not. He came unto ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... out from the wall. "It's pretty clear," he said. Heads turned toward him. "To stay in power, the Nathians had to give us a fairly good government. On the other hand, if we expose them, we give a bunch of political amateurs—every fanatic and power-hungry demagogue in the galaxy—just the weapon they need ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert

... Arabian historians) one of those holy men termed santons who pass their lives in hermitages in fasting, meditation, and prayer until they attain to the purity of saints and the foresight of prophets. "He was," says the indignant Fray Antonio Agapida, "a son of Belial, one of those fanatic infidels possessed by the devil who are sometimes permitted to predict the truth to their followers, but with the proviso that their predictions ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... everlasting destruction. Not, says the plain man, that we are more satisfied with the mere philanthropist of modern times,—the man who professes to love the whole human race without loving God, or indeed often believing that there is a God to love. To us he seems as unloving a person as the mere fanatic. Meanwhile, plain people say, we will have nothing to do with either fanaticism or philanthropy,—we will try to do our duty where God has put us, and to behave justly and charitably by our neighbours; but beyond that we cannot go. ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... successor of the great and good Lincoln, assassinated by a mad fanatic of the slave party. Capital; nothing could be better. And as to South America, with its Guiana, its archipelago of South Shetland, its Georgia, Jamaica, Trinidad, etc., that belongs to the English, too! Well, I'll ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... totalities. He was a small, short, youngish man, sprinkled all over his face with freckles, and wearing redundant yellow hair. A long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded walnut tinge enveloped him; the overlapping sleeves of which were rolled up on his wrists. A deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in his eyes. So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had exclaimed — That's he! that's he! the long-togged scaramouch the Town-Ho's company told us of! Stubb here alluded to a strange story told of the Jeroboam, and a certain ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... rest is largely a matter of taste, training and time of life. But don't let me discourage you. I only suggest that you may have to guard against believing so intensely that you produce the impression of being an impracticable, a fanatic. Be cautious always; be especially cautious when you are cocksure you're right. Unadulterated truth always arouses suspicion in the unaccustomed public. It has the ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... myself in an hope that this second appearance of ambassadors was only an insolent mummery of the same kind; but, alas! Anacharsis himself, all fanatic as he was, could not have imagined that his opera procession should have been the prototype of the real appearance of the representatives of all the sovereigns of Europe themselves, to make the same prostration that was made by those who dared to represent their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of a fanatic himself, thought the customer, but a very entertaining one. "Well, sir," he said, "I am ever so grateful to you. I'll come again. Good-night." And he started down the aisle for ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... be superseded in process of time by that of any at present unmentionable Anne Lee, Joanna Southcote, or Joe Smith. And what the human mind craves, above all things else, is repose towards God,—is not to remain a helpless sport to every fanatic sot that comes up from the abyss of human vanity, and claims to hold it captive by the assumption of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... conqueror of Egypt, as the chief authors of the intestine discords which then (A.D. 661 ) ravaged Islam, conspired to assassinate them; but only succeeded in killing Ali, Muawiyeh escaping with a wound and the fanatic charged with the murder of Amr slaying Kharijeh, the chief of the police at Cairo, by mistake, in his stead. The above verses are part of a famous but very obscure elegy on the downfall of one of the Muslim dynasties ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous

... no assurance in financial and commercial circles. The hopes of neither the more sober, nor of the wild and fanatic reformers of humanity could be realized, and they got into such a war of hate and abuse that they themselves ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith

... melancholy were chiefly varied by a haunting air of "indefinable uneasiness, which infected those who looked upon him and filled them with a kind of pity for the man: though why it did so they would have had some trouble to explain." Such was the strange fanatic whose name was destined to be blown for a season throughout England, who was fated to stand for a moment visible in the eyes of all men, the idol of intolerance, the apostle of violence, of murder, and of fire, and then ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... free, erratic life, his little imprudences, his unguarded expressions, and the reckless "Chaldee MS.," might, with a little twisting, be turned to handles of offence, and wrested to his disadvantage. But the fanatic zeal of his opponents could not rest till their accusations had run through nearly the whole gamut of immoralities. He was not only a blasphemer towards God, but corrupt to wife and children. It seems comical enough at this day that he was obliged ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... part 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 in the midst of his excesses he did not war for love of it. So that it is ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... hastened to put into execution. Time pressed: the enemy had learnt through spies that an assault on Sebastopol was close at hand. Besides, the Grand Dukes had arrived, and the troops, worked up to the highest pitch of loyal fanatic fervour, were mad to fight under the eyes of the sons of their ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... was not to be. His wife was the next person whom he addressed. "Who—who—who," he said, stammering with rage, "who asked this impudent fanatic into the house? ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... Phantastes is a foolish, transparent gull; a mere fanatic napson[323], in my imagination not worthy to sit as ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... writes: "A meek and shy quietist, his intellectual powers were never stimulated into feverous energy by crowds of proselytes, or by the ambition of proselyting. Jacob Behmen was an enthusiast in the strictest sense, as not merely distinguished, but as contradistinguished from a fanatic.... The writings of these Mystics acted in no slight degree to prevent my mind from being imprisoned within the outline of any ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... That many do so elsewhere than in New York—in London, for instance, in Paris, among the mountains of Switzerland, and the steppes of Russia—I do not doubt. But there is generally a vail thrown over the object of the worshiper's idolatry. In New York one's ear is constantly filled with the fanatic's voice as he prays, one's eyes are always on the familiar altar. The frankincense from the temple is ever in one's nostrils. I have never walked down Fifth Avenue alone without thinking of money. I have never walked there with a companion without talking of it. I fancy that every man there, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... contemplated from the vividness or intensity of his conceptions and convictions: fanaticism is heat, or accumulation and direction, of feeling acquired by contagion, and relying on the sympathy of sect or confederacy; intense sensation with confused or dim conceptions. Hence the fanatic can exist only in a crowd, from inward weakness anxious for outward confirmation; and, therefore, an eager proselyter and intolerant. The enthusiast, on the contrary, is a solitary, who lives in a world of his own peopling, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... seven Crusades (1096-1272), during which the Christians of Europe endeavoured, with tremendous yet fitful energy, to wrest the birthplace of Christianity from the equally fanatic Moslems, the Knights Templars fought bravely among the foremost. Whether by the side of Godfrey of Bouillon, Louis VII., Philip V., Richard Coeur de Lion, Louis IX., or Prince Edward, the stern, sunburnt men in the white ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... Elizabethan school proper regard them as effeminate triflers. One of Milton's gorgeous but constantly illogical phrases about the poets of his day may perhaps have created a prejudice against these poets. But Milton was a politician as well as a poet, a fanatic as well as a man of letters of seldom equalled, and never, save in two or three cases, surpassed powers. He was also a man of a more morose and unamiable private character than any other great poet the world has known except Racine. The easy bonhomie of the Caroline ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... that looked into his were as wild as those of the man driven with fever. The face of the Venezuelan was jubilant, exalted, like that of a worshipping fanatic. ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis

... Robert authoritatively silenced him, when my gentler bushings were of no avail, and blasphemous wanderings or ribald camp-songs made my cheeks burn and Robert's face assume an aspect of disgust. The captain was a gentleman in the world's eye, but the contraband was the gentleman in mine;—I was a fanatic, and that accounts for such depravity of taste, I hope. I never asked Robert of himself, feeling that somewhere there was a spot still too sore to bear the lightest touch; but, from his language, manner, and intelligence, I inferred that his color had ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... man became one of the treasurers of our life. It is true that my mother thought he was half crazy, and consequently she and father did not always agree about him, and did not discuss him before the children. But nevertheless, be he a crank, or a fanatic, or what he may, one thing is sure, the richest milk of human kindness flowed from that heart and devoted itself sincerely to the uplift of humanity. I remember him with love, love deep and sacred, up to this present time. However ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... horde, Base traders in the sanctuary, Nor by fanatic fire and sword, Shall man grow as God wills him be; In his own heart a voice hath he That whispers to him small and still; God gives him eyes His good to see: God needs not you to ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... was stirred to the first widespread religious enthusiasm since the ancient days of persecution. Jerusalem, long in the hands of a tolerant sect of Saracens who welcomed the coming of Christian worshippers as a source of revenue, was captured in 1075 by another more fanatic Mahometan sect, and word came back to Europe ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... a woman, who would place the knife of Jacques Clement or of Ravaillac in the hands of a fanatic, would save France." ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... On reading "Ordered South," I saw, at once, that here was a new writer, a writer indeed; one who could do what none of us, nous autres, could rival, or approach. I was instantly "sealed of the Tribe of Louis," an admirer, a devotee, a fanatic, if you please. At least my taste has never altered. From this essay it is plain enough that the author (as is so common in youth, but with better reason than many have) thought himself doomed. Most of us ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... fanatic compiles, I can not think the day a bit diviner, Because no children, with forestalling smiles, Throng, happy, to the gates of Eden Minor— It is not plain, to my poor faith at least, That what we christen "Natural" on Monday, The wondrous history of Bird and Beast, Can ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... unwittingly offended them, that there was a world where it was deemed an offence to torture, strangle, burn, and drown one's innocent fellow-creatures. The usual but trifling excuse for such enormities can not be pleaded for the Emperor. Charles was no fanatic. The man whose armies sacked Rome, who laid his sacrilegious hands on Christ's vicegerent, and kept the infallible head of the Church a prisoner to serve his own political ends, was then no bigot. He believed in nothing; save that when the course of his imperial will was impeded, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... crumbled to pieces in one day like a house of cards, Joseph de Maistre, the most profound and the most prophetic political thinker of his age, wrote the following significant lines from St. Petersburg. To realize the full significance of the judgment, one must remember that Count de Maistre was a fanatic supporter of the old monarchic order. He hated Napoleon with a bitter hatred, but ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... 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 ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... they had changed to a Negro or dark mulatto people and lived scattered in small communities between the Atlantic and Darfur. They were without political union or national sentiment, but were all Mohammedans. Then came a sudden change, and led by a religious fanatic, these despised and persecuted people became masters of the central Sudan. They were the ones who at last broke down that great wedge of resisting Atlantic culture, after it had been undermined and disintegrated by the ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... without apprehension of that fanaticism, which for some time has interfered even with Parliament, and to which there has been too much concession, I incline to the opinion that enthusiasm, as fanaticism, is generally more hurtful to society than scepticism. The fanatic measures are evidently ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... is splendid. My husband is in the churchwarden's pew; he left before me; he is becoming a fanatic—he speaks of lunching ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... martyrdom. Henceforth, divided clans and antagonistic septs were to be unknown among them: only Catholic Irishmen were to remain ranked around the successors of "the saints" of old, all determined to be what they were, or die. But as laws, edicts, and measures of fanatic frenzy cannot destroy a nation, the new people was destined to survive for ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... Revolution from among that wild and fanatical sect, claims to the wandering preachers of his tribe the merit of converting the borderers. He introduces a cavalier, haranguing the Highlanders, and ironically thus guarding them against the fanatic divines: ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... every word she said, by doing what she asked him, and by trying to protect her, often without her knowledge, from any kind of pain or trouble. She would have been amazed had she realised the violence of his devotion to her. Apparently cool and matter-of-fact, he was in reality a reticent fanatic. He neither analysed nor showed his sentiment, nor did he himself know its extent. He wondered why certain people, certain subjects gave him pain. He trusted Valentia absolutely, nor could she in his eyes ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... 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, stands near the railway station in the town ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan

... on Sigismund's hands a fierce rebellion among the reformer's Bohemian followers. The war lasted for a generation, and during its course all the armies of Germany were repeatedly defeated by the fanatic Hussites.[29] ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... Preston Peters from a supercilious scooper-up of random scarabs to what might be called a genuine scarab fan. It does not matter what a man collects; if Nature has given him the collector's mind he will become a fanatic on the subject of whatever collection he sets out to make. Mr. Peters had collected dollars; he began to collect scarabs with precisely the same enthusiasm. He would have become just as enthusiastic ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... have smiled at the notion that any future ages would suspect him of having borrowed any of his polished and epigrammatic lessons of philosophic morals or religion from one whom, if he heard of him, he would have regarded as a poor wretch, half fanatic and half barbarian. ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... bombs left. We haven't been able to locate them with detectors, but those geeks Kankad's men caught on that commando-raid, last night, say that there were at least three of them made. We can't take a chance that some fanatic may load one into an aircar and make ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper

... succeeded in this mansion by a sour fanatic knight, a distant and collateral relation, who claimed the same merit for expelling the priestess of Baal, which his predecessor had founded on maintaining the votaresses of Heaven. Of the two unhappy nuns, driven from their ancient refuge, one went beyond sea; the other, unable ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... of Species had, at any rate, the philosophic temper. If one contemplates the ordinary pulpits and platforms of England, one can but feel the contempt of Julian, or the indifference of Montaigne. We are dominated by the fanatic, whose worst vice is his sincerity. Anything approaching to the free play of the mind is practically unknown amongst us. People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful, but the stupid, who are our shame. There is no ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... consciousness of having done good to an ungrateful world? What infatuation, what amazing infatuation, to require a man of upright character, of talents, intelligence, and learning, to think himself on a level with a selfish priest, or a stupid fanatic, who deal out their absurd fables ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... "'Tis a question which is the greatest. They are men of a very different stamp. Tilly is a soldier, and nothing but a soldier, save that he is a fanatic in religion. He is as cruel as he is brave, and as portentously ugly ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... and then turned and grasped Tennelly's. There was something so genuine and sincere about his face that Tennelly decided that he must really believe all that junk he had been preaching, after all. He wasn't a fake, he was merely a good, wholesome sort of a fanatic. He bowed pleasantly and said a few commonplaces as he ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... of M. Fleuriot there came a cold, bright gleam. He took a step forward. His face seemed to narrow to a greater sharpness. In a moment, to Mr. Ricardo's thought, he ceased to be the judge; he dropped from his high office; he dwindled into a fanatic. ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason

... historian affirms, "In fanatical enthusiasm for Catholicism, he was surpassed by no man who ever lived." His religion and his ambition were fellow-conspirators. Philip II of Spain was a Roman Catholic fanatic; Charles IX of France was a weak mind, of no definite religious conviction, but used by the Catholics to bring about the massacre of seventy thousand Huguenots; Henry IV of France was probably a Huguenot ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... long cultivated," he said, "the habit of connecting the most trivial and customary acts of life with a silent prayer." He took the Bible as his guide, and it is possible that his literal interpretation of its precepts caused many to regard him as a fanatic. His observance of the Sabbath was hardly in accordance with ordinary usage. He never read a letter on that day, nor posted one; he believed that the Government in carrying the mails were violating a divine law, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... which books and papers mingled oddly with the bedroom furniture and the tools and bench of his craft. There were two windows with shabby red curtains. On nails hung a few odd garments, one of which, the doublet anciently pierced by the fanatic's dagger, merely served as a memento, though not visibly older than the rest of his wardrobe. "Who puts a mediocre article into a costly envelope?" was the philosopher's sartorial standpoint. Over the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... The fanatic spoke. Paul regarded him with renewed interest. The black hair streaked with white, banging over the temples on the side away from the parting, the queerly streaked beard, the clear-cut ascetic features, the deep, mournful eyes in whose ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... with heavy wooden shutters and massive padlocks of local or Russian make. Barring a dog or two either lying asleep along the wall, or scraping a heap of refuse in the hope of satisfying hunger—there is hardly a soul walking about. Attracted by a crowd in the distance, one finds a fanatic gesticulating like mad and shouting at the top of his voice before an admiring crowd of ragamuffins squatting ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... "A true fanatic, and therefore to us a useful man," he thought to himself, "though one who knows how to make the best of two worlds as well as most of them;" but aloud he said, "No wonder that our Church rejoices in such ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... scepticism being to scoff at all hidden depths of truth. Else you are civil enough to Kate; and your 'homage' (such as it may happen to be) is always at the service of a woman on the shortest notice. But behind you, I see a worse fellow; a gloomy fanatic; a religious sycophant that seeks to propitiate his circle by bitterness against the offences that are most unlike his own. And against him, I must say one word for Kate to the too hasty reader. This villain, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... Coronis [Footnote: Coronis was the mother of Asclepius; 'corone' is Greek for a crow.] nor even of her namesake the crow, but of a goose! After him streamed the whole people, in all the madness of fanatic hopes. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... against the common law to escape punishment under cover of their religious belief. Crimes committed in the name of religion are always crimes, and the man who has his property stolen or is assaulted cares little whether he has to deal with a religious fanatic or an ordinary criminal. In such instances, the State is not defending a particular dogmatic teaching, but her own most vital interests. Heretics, therefore, who were criminals against the civil law were justly punished. ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... instant's pause. Then Everard, the fanatic of vengeance, the man whose mind upon that one subject was become unsound with excess of brooding, answered with conviction: "As I have a soul to be saved, Justin, I do believe it. More—I know it. Here!" Trembling hands took ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... 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 way. News came down to the ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... 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

... Marie-Antoinette, confided to Cesar Birotteau, during this critical period, his attachment to the fallen tyrants. This disclosure was one of the cardinal events in Cesar's life. The nightly conversations when the shop was closed, the street quiet, the accounts regulated, made a fanatic of the Tourangian, who in becoming a royalist obeyed an inborn instinct. The recital of the virtuous deeds of Louis XVI., the anecdotes with which husband and wife exalted the memory of the queen, fired the imagination of the young ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... town, And those he had taught up, teach down. And make those uses serve agen 95 Against the new-enlighten'd men, As fit as when at first they were Reveal'd against the CAVALIER; Damn ANABAPTIST and FANATIC, As pat as Popish and Prelatic; 100 And with as little variation, To serve for any Sect i' th' nation. The Good Old Cause, which some believe To be the Dev'l that tempted EVE With Knowledge, and does still invite 105 The world to mischief with new Light, Had store of money ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... worm-eaten and crumbling. Truly, he had 'incomparable power.' He was the least capable and the most self-conscious of artists; his observation was that of an inspired and very careful auctioneer; he was a visionary and a fanatic; he was gross, ignorant, morbid of mind, cruel in heart, vexed with a strain of Sadism that makes him on the whole corrupting and ignoble in effect. But he divined and invented prodigiously if he observed and recorded tediously, and his achievement remains a phantasmagoria of desperate suggestions ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... mother had played the part of supers. But slight as was the episode, it had all the attraction of the unknown for me. Of Tournebut and its owners I knew nothing. Who, in reality, was this Mme. de Combray, sanctified by Balzac? A fanatic, or an intriguer?—And her daughter Mme. Acquet? A heroine or a lunatic?—and the lover? A hero or an adventurer?—And the husband, the lawyer and the friends of the house? Mme. Acquet more than all piqued my curiosity. The daughter of a good house disguised ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... bridge with Greg; under the circumstances it would be a delicious experience. She layed brilliantly, and Greg, when he was matched by partner and opponents, became absorbed in the game with absolutely fanatic fervor. Rachael had a vision of her own white hand spreading out the cards, of the nod and glance that said clearly: "Great bidding, Rachael; we're ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... proclamation of the one true God whose volition bears the irresistible destiny of the universe; and inseparably associated with this was an intense hatred of idolatry, fanned by the wings of God's wrath and producing a fanatic sense of a divine commission to avenge him on his insulters and vindicate for him his rightful worship from every nation. There is an apparent conflict between the Mohammedan representations of God's absolute predestination of all things, and the abundant exhortations to all ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... 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 parent ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... respect to the emotions of pleasurable excitement with which you left Lady M.'s ball? I am no fanatic, nor ascetic; and I can imagine it possible (though not probable) that among the visitors there some simple-minded and simple-hearted people, amused with the crowds, the dresses, the music, and the flowers, may have felt, even in ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... consequences, always served as the key-note to the chorus of rebellion. Ellen paid little attention to it. She was earning good wages, and personally she had nothing of which to complain. She had come to regard Beals as something of a chronic fanatic, but as she knew that the lasters were fairly paid, she had not supposed it meant anything. However, one night, going home from the factory, her eyes were opened. Abby and Maria Atkins and Mamie Brady were with her, and shortly ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... as its strength, its province, and its limits. If he can be an unbeliever, he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful or useful, to which he does not assent; he honors the ministers of religion, and it contents ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... were. They may be growing wise, but the intermediate passage is dulness. Several of the women are agreeable, and some of the men; but the latter are in general vain and ignorant. The savans—I beg their pardons, the philosophes—are insupportable, superficial, overbearing, and fanatic: they preach incessantly, and their avowed doctrine is atheism; you would not believe how openly—Don't wonder, therefore, if I should return a Jesuit. Voltaire himself does not satisfy them. One of their lady devotees said of him, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... thrones they now hold far back beyond the range of history. The scheming politician, the low debauchee, the debased sensualist, the chivalrous soldier, the daring ambitious descendant of a line of royal robbers, the crafty intriguer, the religious enthusiast, the fanatic and the sceptic side by side, you can trace in each swarthy face the character written on its features by the working ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... patron of this sect, which had in the committee a more zealous, disinterested, and fanatic partisan than himself, in the person of Saint-Just, who was called the Apocalyptic. His features were bold but regular, and marked by an expression determined, but melancholy. His eye was steady and piercing; his hair black, straight, and long. His manners ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... he is fond of too many pursuits. The man who succeeds is generally the narrow mall; the man of one idea, who works at nothing but that; sees everything only through the light of that; sacrifices everything to that: the fanatic, in short. By fanatics, whether military, commercial, or religious, and not by 'liberal- minded men' at all, has the world's work been done in all ages. Amid the modern cants, one of the most mistaken ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... tonight go into any one of a dozen aristocratic churches I could name and propose to the members to take any such pledge as the one he's mentioned here tonight, and see how quick the people would laugh at him for a fool or a crank or a fanatic. Oh, no! That's not the remedy. That can't ever amount to anything. We've got to have a new start in the way of government. The whole thing needs reconstructing. I don't look for any reform worth anything to come out of the ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon

... of Adams there was no soft sentiment nor romantic vagaries. "He is a Puritan in all the word implies, and the unbending fanatic of independence," wrote Gage, and ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... Hardy; "I may be hard on them—as you say, they can't help being rich. But, now, I don't want you to think me a violent one-sided fanatic; shall I tell you some of my experiences up here—some passages from ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... that was found hidden in the sand and brush. This was the "Emma Dean," left by Powell. The ferryman materialized two days later, calling himself "Major Doyle," but his real identity was developed soon thereafter. Beadle gives about a chapter to his interview with Lee, whom he called "a born fanatic." Beadle, who had written much against the Church, also had given a false name, but his identity was discovered by Mrs. Lee through clothing marks. Beadle quoted "Mrs. Doyle" as saying that her husband had been with the Mormon Battalion. This was hardly exact, though it ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... For the Osmanli is a warrior, and his nation is a warrior tribe; his belief is too simple for civilization, his courage too blind and devoted for the military operations of our times, his heart too easily roused by the bloodthirsty instincts of the fanatic, and too ready to bear the misfortunes of life with the grave indifference of the fatalist. He lacks the balance of the faculties which is imposed upon civilized man by a conscious distinction of the possible from the impossible; he lacks the capacity for being contented with that state ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... devout as Columbus himself, always rendering thanks to the Almighty for His favors, but was by no means a fanatic in religion. While Columbus ascribes his discoveries to the especial favor of some particular saint, on occasions, or his deliverance from danger to the direct interposition of Providence, Vespucci makes no such superstitious claims for himself, though acknowledging ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober

... possible from the wild, waving arms, the frenzied eyes, the gaunt and wolfish aspect, the piercing, agonized voice of the fanatic, who had assumed to himself the solemn office of soul-comforter in a time of extremity. I saw from a distance his long, lank figure writhing like a sapling in a storm, as it overtopped the crowd; but his words were lost on my ear, and I sat leaning back against the bulwark ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... so covered with rings that they could hardly hold their gold pencils—do they remind us of anybody? Mr. Fledgeby, with his little ugly eyes and social flashiness and craven bodily servility—might not some fanatic like M. Drumont make interesting conjectures about him? The particular types that people hate in Jewry, the types that are the shame of all good Jews, absolutely run riot in this book, which is supposed to contain an apology to them. It looks at first sight as if Dickens's ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... much of his influence to the singular sweetness of his disposition and the urbanity of his manners. His wide sympathies interested him in many causes, and even his antagonists were not enemies. Stephen, on the other hand, as Mr. Henry Adams says, was a 'high-minded fanatic.' To be interested in any but the great cause was to rouse his suspicions. 'If you,' he once wrote to Wilberforce, 'were Wellington, and I were Massena, I should beat you by distracting your attention from the main point.' Any courtesies shown by Wilberforce to his ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... he 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 ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis

... Certainly she acted on behalf of someone interested in it; and since neither Bristol nor I could conceive of any one seeking to possess the bloodstained thing except the mysterious leader of the Hashishin—Hassan of Aleppo—as a creature of that awful fanatic being I ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... For some months it was believed that the Elector wished by his conduct to obliterate the memory of the errors, vices, and principles of the Duc de Deux-Ponts (his former title). But placing all his confidence in a political adventurer and revolutionary fanatic, Montgelas, without either consistency or firmness, without being either bent upon information or anxious about popularity, he threw the whole burden of State on the shoulders of this dangerous man, who soon showed the world that his master, by his first treaties, intended only to pocket ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... weren't able or willing to adapt themselves to changing conditions; they're all backing Rakkeed and yelling 'Znidd suddabit!' now. You know, it's a shame that geek messiah isn't a smart crook, instead of an honest fanatic; he could take in the equivalent of a couple of million sols a year off the North Uller merchants and the Equatorial Zone shipowners. But it is a fact, which not even Rakkeed can successfully deny, that we've ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... into an herb garden. For four years before mother went, and six since, I've worked with all my might, and results are beginning to take shape. While I've been at it, of course, my neighbours had an inkling of what was going on, and I've been called a fool, lazy, and a fanatic, because I did not fell the trees and plow for corn. You readily can see I'm a little short of corn ground out there," he waved toward the marsh and lake, "and up there," he indicated the steep hill and wood. "But somewhere on this land I've been able to find muck for mallows, water for flags and ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... the Spanish revolution astounded Europe. In France a fanatic by the name of Louvel deemed the moment come to strike at the reigning house of France. Louvel had followed Napoleon to exile in Elba. After the Hundred Days he dogged the footsteps of the Bourbon princes with a settled ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson



Words linked to "Fanatic" :   fanatical, fiend, partisan, passionate, overzealous, enthusiast, rabid



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