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Devotee   /dˌɛvətˈi/   Listen
Devotee

noun
1.
An ardent follower and admirer.  Synonyms: buff, fan, lover.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Devotee" Quotes from Famous Books



... generally in Persia a small carpet, but frequently a fine mat in Hindustan, which is spread for the performance of prayer. The devotee kneels and prostrates himself upon it in his act of devotion. It is superfluous to remark that the Muhammadans pray with their face turned towards Mecca, as far as they can guess its direction. Jerusalem was the original point, but the prophet, (it is said,) ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli

... training that will enable him to win success in the competition of business. In the larger society outside of college the art-lover gathers about him many treasures for his own aesthetic delight, the politician exerts himself for the attainment of power and position, the religious devotee hopes for personal favors from the unseen powers. These are on different planes of value, they are estimated differently by different persons, but they all centre in the individual, and if society benefits it ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... innocent, almost angelic. The light from the window made her hair toss into gold; her blue eyes sought Cynthia with the singleness of blue stars. It was evident whom she had come to see. She held out her flowers towards her with a gesture at once humble and worshipful, like that of some devotee at a shrine. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... one day an American girl felt herself sharply nudged in the side, and when she turned she found the palm of her kneeling neighbor stretched toward her. They must all have had their parish churches besides the cathedral, and a devotee might make the day a social whirl by visiting one shrine after another. But I do not think that many do. The Spanish women are of a domestic genus, and are expected to keep at home by the men who ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... and either in Surrey or in his native county for the rest of his life, which is (not certainly) said to have ended about 1643. Browne was evidently a man of very wide literary sympathy, which saved him from falling into the mere groove of the Fletchers. He was a personal friend and an enthusiastic devotee of Jonson, Drayton, Chapman. He was a student of Chaucer and Occleve. He was the dear friend and associate of a poet more gifted but more unequal than himself, George Wither. All this various literary cultivation had the advantage of keeping him ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... affections and no illusions; he had faith in organizations, but none in man; was destitute of compunctions, careless of conventions and appearances, cynical, penetrating, and frivolous. He was a skeptic in religion, but a devotee of astrology; easily worried in safety, but cool and audacious in danger. He despised if he did not hate the people, and regarded kings as an unavoidable nuisance; the state, he thought, was the aristocracy, whose business it was ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... occurrences in nature, how impressive they may be, much thought of in devotional moods. The moment that an event is recognized to be under fixed law, it is seen to be inappropriate to seek by supplication to alter it. No devotee, acquainted with the theory of the tides, would, like Canute the King, think of staying their waves with words. Eclipses and comets, once matters of superstitious terror, have been entirely shorn of this attribute by astronomical ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... question, American Puritan, Chinese or English devotee to filial affection, would thus, each in her or his degree, have, in the circumstances supposed, acted in a manner opposed to the general interest, and would therefore be condemned by Utilitarianism ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... it gazes on a light, A child the moment when it drains the breast, A devotee when soars the Host in sight, An Arab with a stranger for a guest, A sailor when the prize has struck in fight, A miser filling his most hoarded chest, Feel rapture; but not such true joy are reaping As they who watch o'er ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... been a passionate courtier and, while he was interested, a fiery devotee. When he abandoned her she suffered with the devastation that deserted wives and recent widows endure but must not speak of. It meant terribly much to Charity Coe to be left alone. It was dangerous to ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... you doing? No, I should not be shocked. I never was a devotee of the Warren. I always thought there were a great many ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... answered he to her, with a great deal of pleasure, that Count de Grammont has recovered his former health, and acquired a new devotion. Hitherto I have been contented with being a plain honest man; but I must do something more; and I only wait for your example to become a devotee. You live in a country where people have wonderful advantages of saving their souls, there vice is almost as opposite to the mode as to virtue; sinning passes for ill-breeding, and shocks decency and good manners, as much as ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... life, on p. 326, of a wandering Tibetan devotee, whom I met once at Hardwar, may give an idea of the sordid Bacsis spoken ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... poetry the sciences, and their practical applications are all discussed at length; and the discussion is thrown into the form of conversations between an enthusiastic champion of the modern age, who conducts the debate, and a devotee of antiquity, who finds it difficult not to admit the arguments of his opponent, yet obstinately persists ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... water springing from the rock are voided by spouts carved in the shape of dragons into a stone basin enclosed by rails, within which it is written that "no woman may enter." If you are in luck, you may cool yourself by watching some devotee, naked save his loin-cloth, performing the ceremony called Suigiyo; that is to say, praying under the waterfall that his soul may be purified through his body. In winter it requires no small pluck to go ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... fascination, as if men were created for the amusement of their lighter moments. Lily's defiant, inscrutable eyes mocked him. But Mrs. Carstang gave him sweet friendship, and he sat by her with the unchanging loyalty of a devotee to an altar from which the ...
— The Indian On The Trail - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... novelists; and not the slightest objection is raised. Then descending lower and still lower; disregarding alike the warning of Lord Bacon 'a credulous man is a deceiver,' and of Tacitus fingunt simul creduntque—he rakes up even a devotee, Boturini, and makes him also an historic authority, without overtaxing public credulity; though this wretch, as we have seen, out-Munchausens Pietro himself, and as he may have surpassed every other man in Spain in drawing the long bow, was justly selected for historiographer, at a time ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... be read with pleasure, so he may be skipped without shame. There are some writers whom to skip may seem to a conscientious devotee of letters both wicked and unwise—wicked because it is disrespectful to them, unwise because it is quite likely to inflict loss on the reader. Now nobody can ever think of respecting Leigh Hunt; he is not unfrequently amiable, but never in the least venerable. Even at his best he seldom or ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... both of faith and practice. It came in a form that was received as religion, for it was not only morality "touched" but infused with motion. Nor were the emotions kindled, those of the partisan only, but rather also those of the devotee and the martyr. Henceforth Buddhism, with its inventions, its fables, and its endless dogmatism, was for the common people, for women and children, but not for the Samurai. The new Confucianism came to Japan as ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... the Emperor's proclamation on the walls of Grenoble," he said proudly and with a tremor of enthusiasm in his voice, "the Emperor, whom treachery more vile than any since the days of the Iscariot sent into humiliation and exile! The Emperor has come back!" cried the young devotee with that extraordinary fervour which Napoleon alone—of all men that have ever walked upon this earth—was able to suscitate: "his Imperial eagles once more soar over France carrying on their wings her honour and glory to the outermost corners of Europe. His proclamation is to his people ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... like a little princess," she heard her uncle say one day. "She will be some day a beautiful, an enchanting woman—her mother was so when she died at twenty, but she had been brought up differently. This one is a little devotee. I am afraid of her. Her governess tells me she rises in the night to pray." He said it with light laughter to some of his gay friends by whom he had wished the child to be seen. He did not know that his gayety ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... commands attention from the public and grateful regard from the devotee is Onc. papilio. Its strange form fascinated the Duke of Devonshire, grandfather to the present, who was almost the first of our lordly amateurs, and tempted him to undertake the explorations which introduced so many ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... of a certain saintess named Fatimah: who is she and where may be her abode? "Marvellous!"[FN217] exclaimed the man: "How canst thou be in our city and yet never have heard about the miracles of the Lady Fatimah? Evidently, O thou poor fellow, thou art a foreigner, since the fastings of this devotee and her asceticism in worldly matters and the beauties of her piety never came to thine ears." The Moorman rejoined, " 'tis true, O my lord: yes, I am a stranger and came to this your city only yesternight; and I hope thou wilt inform me concerning the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... which the History makes a great Stride towards the final Catastrophe. —The Return to England, and the Visit to a Devotee ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... finds all the courts occupied, and everyone very much alive. Standing on the top of the stone steps that lead down to one of the courts, he glances sharply round him. No! Tita is not here. Tita, who is a perfect devotee where tennis is concerned. Where is she, then? A second time his glance sweeps the tennis courts, and now his brow grows dark; Hescott ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... or condemned. On what grounds may a religion be criticised? What would constitute the proof of an absolute religion? History is strewn with discredited religions; men began to quarrel over religion so soon as they had any; and it is customary for every religious devotee to believe jealously and exclusively. There can be no doubt, then, that religion is subject to justification; it remains to distinguish the tests which may with propriety be applied, and in particular to isolate ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... all the books, that have been printed concerning Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, there is not one which more vividly and accurately set the men before us and describe their essential characteristics than the casual lines of this old letter:—Thoreau, the devotee of nature, "figuring dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice," joyous in the presence of his god; the mystic Hawthorne, wrapped in his sombre cloak, "moved like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately and grave,"—with magic force these words throw upon the screen of the imagination ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... residue or abstract—he must cling. The various pathetic traits of the beloved, suffering, perished body of Flavian, so deeply pondered, had made him a materialist, but with something of the temper of a devotee. ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... confess a baronet who presided over the first radical meeting ever held in England—he was an atheist when he came over to us, in the hope of mortifying his own church—but he is now—ho! ho!—a real Catholic devotee—quite afraid of my threats; I make him frequently scourge himself before me. Well, Radicalism does us good service, especially amongst the lower classes, for Radicalism chiefly flourishes amongst them; for though a ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... know. Her eyes beamed upon him with a gentle, yet sweet, strange, spiritual light. She scarcely appeared flesh and blood. But he was very human, and his heart craved from her human love and earthly solace. Though now, as at other times, this seemed as presumptuous to him as if some devotee had sacrilegiously fallen in love with his fair patron saint, still he felt a sudden and strong irritation that they should be ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... sympathy. A word, a mere inflection, was sufficient to set in motion the most complicate and obscure conceptions in her brain, permitting her to comprehend with equal clarity the Egyptian queen of pleasure and the austere devotee to whom joy is a snare. From time to time she uttered little exclamations of pleasure, and at the end of each act motioned him to proceed, as if eager ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... were also pleased to hear from that earnest woman, Susan B. Anthony, inspired by the immutable abstract truths of justice and equity. Reports say that she has the air of a Catholic devotee. She said that in defiance of "the powers that be" she took a place on that platform in Independence square, and at the proper time delivered the engrossed copy of the declaration to the Hon. T. W. Ferry, who received it with a courteous bow; and afterward on the steps ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... who had so much of juvenile shyness in her manner, so much of feeling and of judgment in her thoughts and actions. Dame Margery followed, mixed in the party escorted by Father Aldrovand, whose company she chiefly frequented; for Margery affected a little the character of the devotee, and her influence in the family, as having been Eveline's nurse, was so great as to render her no improper companion for the chaplain, when her lady did not require her attendance on her own person. Then came old Raoul the huntsman, his wife, and two or three other officers of Raymond ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... reaction after long self-control. Strange noises of unnatural laughter, for instance, proceeded from distant corners of the hall, and each of the electric lights in turn winked facetiously. The string of the double bass broke loudly, and the new string which its devotee laboriously inserted also broke at once. The performer looked appealingly at Lady Arabel, but she refrained from meeting his eye. A blizzard of butterflies enveloped the table. This was evidently rather a difficult trick, for the spell collapsed repeatedly, and from one second to another ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... saying very little. She was a good girl—and this is saying something more, and something better. Nothing but a true heart and excellent common sense saved her from being spoiled by the indulgence of her father and mother. Another devotee was added to those who adored her; but she refused to be spoiled even by Levi's flattery, if such it could be called; for the young skipper was as sincere in his admiration of her as of the yacht he commanded. Bessie did ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... young man is fitted and prepared to begin the career of life until he has accomplished his great fast. Seven days appear to have been the ancient maximum limit of endurance, and the success of the devotee is inferred from the length of continued abstinence to which he is known to have attained. These fasts are anticipated by youth as one of the most important events of life. They are awaited with ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... versed in Cupid's wily way; No courtier bolder of the present day; Well made and handsome, with attractive mind; Wo what might happen was the husband blind? Whoever trusts implicitly to friends, Too oft will find, on shadows he depends. Pray where's the devotee, who could withstand, The tempting glimpse of charms that all command; Which first invite by halves: then bolder grow, Till fascination spreads, and bosoms glow? Our Damon fancied this already done, Or, at the best, might be too soon begun: On these foundations ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... religion, by exceptionally intense love and devotion, accompanied by purity of life, for only "the pure in heart shall see God". The external means are prayer to and meditation on the Object of devotion—Shr[i] R[a]ma, Shr[i] K[r.][s.]h[n.]a, the Lord Jesus—long continued and persevering, and the devotee realises his Divinity by ecstacy attaining Union thereby. Such Mystics are, for the most part, valuable to the world as creating an atmosphere of spirituality, which raises the general level of religious feeling ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant

... infirmity, who does not understand a word you are saying, yet desires you to believe that he does understand you, and who is extremely jealous that you suspect his incapacity. When she saw that some remark was necessary, she resembled exactly in her criticism the devotee who pitched on the "sweet word Mesopotamia" as the most edifying note which she could bring away from a sermon. She indeed hastened to bestow general praise on what she said was all "very fine;" but chiefly dwelt on what I, had said about Mr. Timmerman, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... worthy representative of his class was not without a counterpart among the moral inmates of the watch-house. Another man, who was known among his friends as a Catholic voteen, or devotee, happened to have been brought to the game establishment, much in the same circumstances, and for some similar offence. When compared together, it was really curious to observe the extraordinary resemblance which these two men bore to each other. Each was dressed in sober clothes, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... She rose in the estimation of her companions, who had not been so brave; and Cornudet listened to her with the approving and benevolent smile of an apostle, the smile a priest might wear in listening to a devotee praising God; for long-bearded democrats of his type have a monopoly of patriotism, just as priests have a monopoly of religion. He held forth in turn, with dogmatic self-assurance, in the style of the proclamations daily pasted on the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... "Not bein' a devotee of Indian peeris, as our Doctor said to the Pusser, I can't exactly say. Phyllis's was good enough after musketry practice at Mozambique. I couldn't get off the first two or three nights on account of what you might call an imbroglio with ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... He was like a student of insects who had never seen a bee. Never had he known a young girl who cared for the things which this maiden sought, or who was not dazzled by things to which Hope seemed perfectly indifferent. She was not a devotee, she was not a prude; people seemed to amuse and interest her; she liked them, she declared, as much as she liked books. But this very way of putting the thing seemed like inverting the accustomed order of affairs in the polite world, and ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... was it not worth any money to taste trout fished from Petrarch's stream, eggs whose ancestors had crowed in Petrarch's hearing, salad grown within perhaps a stone's-throw of Petrarch's garden? Thus doubtless our hostess reasoned, and in all probability she was right. What devotee would be deterred from visiting such a shrine by the ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... Tour had an aunt in France, who was a woman of quality, rich, old, and a complete devotee. She had behaved with so much cruelty towards her niece upon her marriage, that Madame de la Tour had determined no extremity of distress should ever compel her to have recourse to her hard-hearted relation. But when she became a mother, the pride of resentment was overcome ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... take more kindly to the rifle, now and then one is found who is a devotee of the hound. Such a one was an old Missourian, who may be called Mr. Cowley, whom I knew when he was living on a ranch in North Dakota, west of the Missouri. Mr. Cowley was a primitive person, of much nerve, which he ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... pain, to seek a remedy for it; they are inspired therefore from the first by a dark view of human life, and by the sentiment of compassion. It was the impression made on the young prince, of the general prevalence of suffering, that drove him forth from the palace to be a sannyasin or devotee. In a striking sermon he uses the figure of fire to indicate how universal is the rule of pain in all parts of nature and of human life. "All is burning; the eye is burning, and all it looks on and all it remembers of what it has seen"; so ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... in the thrilling orchestra of Attis. The fast which accompanied the mourning for the dead god may perhaps have been designed to prepare the body of the communicant for the reception of the blessed sacrament by purging it of all that could defile by contact the sacred elements. In the baptism the devotee, crowned with gold and wreathed with fillets, descended into a pit, the mouth of which was covered with a wooden grating. A bull, adorned with garlands of flowers, its forehead glittering with gold leaf, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... whose self is contented with knowledge and experience, who is unmoved, who has restrained his senses, and to whom a sod, a stone, and gold are alike, is said to be devoted.... A devotee should constantly devote himself to abstraction, remaining in a secret place, alone, with his mind and self restrained, without expectations and without belongings. Fixing his seat firmly in a clean place, not too ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... by God. The old woman is keeping up her assumption of the character of a devotee by ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... necessity of poisoning Mr. Bung. She had in the personal sense nothing against Mr. Bung and apart from poisoning him she had every respect for Mr. Bung. Miss De Forrest, who talks admirably on a variety of topics, expressed herself as warmly in favour of the League of Nations and as a devotee of the short ballot ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... startling; because you have been a slayer of men, and have lived a life of storm and adventure," yet it was in truth the contrast to the pale, anaemic type which young people instinctively picture in a devotee which caused the astonishment in their minds. They remained silent, hanging their heads, ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... devotee of mine is the son of a certain Lord Wilmot, who fought on the late King's side in the troubles. This creature went to the university of Oxford at twelve years old—as it were, straight from his go-cart to college, and was master ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... was like wedding a foreigner without learning his tongue. The subtle beauties of the heath were lost to Eustacia; she only caught its vapours. An environment which would have made a contented woman a poet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy woman thoughtful, made a rebellious ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... in a grotesque mythology and an inconceivable multiplication of divinity; the gods in the Hindu Pantheon are numbered by the thousands. At its best Pantheism issues in a kind of mystic poetry and creates a devotee sensitive as Tagore to the fugitive gleams of beauty through the murk of things, voicing his prayers and insights in rare phrases which are, on the whole, in arresting contrast to the actuality of life about him. Western devotion has been caught by the mystic and poetical character ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... claim that the modern Bulgars are of this race were moved more by their admiration of such customs than by scientific scrutiny. One of them, Christoff, who assumed the name of Tartaro-Bulgar to show that he believed in his theories, is usually thought nowadays to have been more of a poet than a devotee of erudition; if he had been still more of a poet, approaching, say, Pencho Slaveikoff, we would take less objection to his waywardness. The other champion of that ancestry is Theodore Paneff, who showed ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... two ranks of adversaries. On one side, the Church authorities denounced him as a freethinker; on the other, Voltaire ridiculed him as a devotee. Feeling that his greatest danger was from the orthodox theologians, De Maillet endeavoured to protect himself by disguising his name in the title of his book, and by so wording its preface and dedication that, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... the crypt, where the body of St. Apollinaris used to lie (it is now under the high altar above); and as I desired to see where he used to rest, I walked in. I also walked into about six inches of water, in the dim, irreligious light; and so made a cold-water Baptist devotee of myself. In the side aisles are wonderful old sarcophagi, containing the ashes of archbishops of Ravenna, so old that the owners' names are forgotten of two of them, which shows that a man may build a tomb more enduring than his memory. The sculptured bas-reliefs ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... a small cake of stone or hardened clay, containing an inscription from the Koran. These praying-stones are obtained from the sacred soil of Meshed, Koom, or Kerbela, and are placed in position on the ground in front of the kneeling devotee during his devotions, so that, instead of touching his forehead to the carpet or the common ground of his native village, he can bring it in contact with the hallowed soil of one of these holy cities. Distance lends enchantment to a holy place, and adds to the efficacy of a prayer-stone ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... not change my religion on compulsion, the dagger at my throat. Instruct me, instruct me, I am not obstinate." There spoke the wily freethinker, determined not to be juggled out of what he considered his property by fanatics or priests of either church. Had Henry been a real devotee, the fate of Christendom might have been different. The world has long known how much misery it is in the power of crowned bigots ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... once exclaimed as the walls were rising, feeling that there must always be a battle between what the old Hall stood for and the new building was to foster. But the structures have gone on in harmony, and many a devotee of science has had hospitable welcome in the quarters intended for the recruits of what so many suppose to be the opposing camp. There was a notable case of this kind in ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... enjoyable as well as useful. To go quit smoking, when there ain't any sufficient excuse for it!—why, my old boy, when they used to tell me I would shorten my life ten years by smoking, they little knew the devotee they were wasting their puerile words upon; they little knew how trivial and valueless I would regard a decade that had no smoking in it! But I won't persuade you, Twichell—I won't until I see you again—but then we'll smoke for a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... vision of the rumour will not flee. Doth the Boy own such Mother?—shoot his dart To bring her, countless as the crested deeps, Her subjects of the uncorrected heart? False is that vision, shrieks the devotee; Incredible, we echo; and anew Like a far growling lightning-cloud it leaps. Low humourist this leader seems; perchance Pitched from his University career, Adept at classic fooling. Yet of mould Human those ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the use of it; they will prevent truth from reaching his ears; they will exasperate him against true talents, and prejudice him in favour of contemptible ones; in short, they will make him a weak devotee, who will have no idea either of justice or injustice, nor of true glory, nor of true greatness, and who will be destitute of the knowledge and virtues necessary to the government of a great nation. Such is the plan of the education of a child, destined ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach

... whistling and nasal order. Indeed, before long every one in the inn had followed their soothing example, and the hostelry lay plunged in complete restfulness. Only in the window of the room of the newly-arrived lieutenant from Riazan did a light remain burning. Evidently he was a devotee of boots, for he had purchased four pairs, and was now trying on a fifth. Several times he approached the bed with a view to taking off the boots and retiring to rest; but each time he failed, for the reason that the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... pleasure-seeking favorite of the empress—you saw him devoted only to amusement and enjoyment, and you said to yourself: 'That is the man I need. As I cannot myself be made regent, let it be him! I will govern through him; and while this voluptuous devotee of pleasure gives himself up to the intoxication of enjoyments, I will rule in his stead.' Well, Mr. Field-Marshal, were not those ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... the world is cumbered, Gods unnamed, and gods unnumbered, Never god was known to be Who had not his devotee. So I dedicate to mine, Here in ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... in danger of being hanged; my risk is the Bastille only, where I can get cards and girls, and whence my family could, and would, soon deliver me, as my father would interest some duchess or some ballet dancer in my doom, and my mother, devotee as she has become, could and would still get the assistance of one or other of the royal princes. It is irrevocably fixed; I take Jahel with me or I remain here. You and Tournebroche are at liberty to hire a ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... os, mouth; i.e. "carrying to one's mouth''), primarily an act of homage or worship, which, among the Romans, was performed by raising the hand to the mouth, kissing it and then waving it in the direction of the adored object. The devotee had his head covered, and after the act turned himself round from left to right. Sometimes he kissed the feet or knees of the images of the gods themselves, and Saturn and Hercules were adored with the head bare. By a natural transition ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the description "from motives of personal delicacy." The case was that of young Johnson, a wealthy devotee of Paine in London, who had followed him to Paris and lived in the same house with him. Hearing that Marat had resolved on Paine's death, Johnson wrote a will bequeathing his property to Paine, then stabbed himself, but recovered. Paine was examined ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... husband! Alas, what shall be the plight of the old king, my sire, with Gandhari, and his daughters-in-law and grand-daughters-in-law! Without doubt, the beautiful and large-eyed mother of Lakshmana, made sonless and husbandless, will soon meet with her death! If Charvaka, the mendicant devotee who is a master of speech, learns everything, that blessed man will certainly avenge himself of my death! By dying upon the sacred field of Samantapanchaka, celebrated over the three worlds, I shall certainly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... (the younger ones were fast going to the bad, he thought), while I stood looking out over the lake, a pretty sheet of water, surrounded mostly by cypress woods, but disfigured for the present by the doings of lumbermen. What interested me most (such is the fate of the devotee) was a single barn swallow, the first and only one that I saw on ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... Farringdon would have been horrified had she known that a portion of the wood was set apart by Elisabeth as "Athene's Grove," and that the contents of the waste-paper basket were daily begged from the servants by the devotee, and offered up, by the aid of real matches, on the ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... and who has since been pretty well plucked by merciless Greek banditti and Newmarket jockeys, but who bears his losses with the temper of a philosopher, and still pursues the destructive vice with all the infatuation of the most ardent devotee." "How d'ye do, old fellows?—how d'ye do? Who would have thought to have met the philosopher (pointing to me) at such a place as this, among the impures of both sexes, legs and leg-ees? Come to sport a little blunt with the table or the traders, hey! Heartly? Always suspected ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... the domestic peace of the portrait-painter demanded, and when Sir Charles Greville, sitting for his portrait, became acquainted with the beautiful model, Romney saw his opportunity to escape the inevitable crash. So Sir Charles, the man of culture, the patron of the picturesque, the devotee of beauty, undertook the further education of Emma as an ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... and hope to press the truth home to the hearts of those who shall hear me," replied the young devotee, his face lighting up with the blended rapture of religious enthusiasm, youth ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... can you bear for a lifetime with my impatience, dear child?" asked the empress, kissing the little devotee on the forehead. "You know now, my little Charlotte, why I have been so unkind to-day; you know that my heart was bleeding with such anguish, that had I not broken out in anger, I must have stifled with agony. You have seen into the depths of my heart, and why should I not confide in you, who ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... "It is a monumental work, of living interest alike to the erudite devotee of the arts and to the person who simply enjoys, in books or his travels, the wonderful and beautiful things that have come from the hand of man.... In a particularly happy fashion, Miss O'Reilly has told the story of the French cathedrals against a human background—of the great men and women of ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... personality made up of that courtly heredity, whose smallest quite spontaneous acts and habits seemed to men worth recording, as showing how the perfect gentleman behaved: a model. Another side is found in the lover of poetry, the devotee of music, the man of keen and intense affections. Surely, if a poseur, he might have posed when bereavement touched him; he might have assumed a high philosophic calm. But no; he never bothered to; even though reproached for inconsistency. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... visitor concludes is a start in that direction, but he is told that it is destined for the town of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, three hundred miles inland. The bell was a present to the church by some pious devotee, but the money donated did not provide for its removal inland. This cost the priests refuse to pay, and the Chiquitanos equally refuse to transport it free. There is no resident priest to make them, so there it stays. In the meantime the bell is slung up on three poles. ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... view many ends, and vary according to the impulsive and instinctive endowments of the creatures in question, has been well brought out in the admirable studies of instinct which we now have at our disposal. The most ardent devotee of pleasure must recognize, that only certain pleasures are open to him; that, such as they are, they are a revelation of his nature and capacities; that pleasures, if sought at all, cannot be secured directly, but only as the result of a successful striving ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... to the life, in "Abel Drugger," a vacant stare peculiar to Nollekens, the sculptor; and Colley Cibber's father was a devotee of the chisel and adorned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... stranger in some surprise. He had long hair, of a reddish yellow, with an abundant beard of the same hue. His suit of worn black fitted him poorly, but Dr. Brown evidently was not a devotee of dress. No tailor could ever point to him, and say with pride: "That man's clothes were made ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger

... in celebrating with friends the taking of his degree. He would have sold not only the heavily mortgaged estates inherited by himself, but also those of his wife, except for the fierce remonstrances of his heirs. He could write clever verse, he was a devotee of belles-lettres, and a sceptic in the fashion of the time. Self-indulgent, he was likewise bitterly opposed to all family discipline. His figure was slight and lithe, his expression alert and intelligent, his eyes gray blue and his ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... was made under the auspices of an American comedian then appearing in London, an old devotee of the poppy, and it took place shortly after Sir Lucien Pyne had proposed marriage to Rita. This proposal she had not rejected outright; she had pleaded time for consideration. Monte Irvin was away, and Rita secretly hoped that on his ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... "Mr. Terpening is a devotee of the grafted tree. And why? A burnt child spurns the fire, says the proverb. Mr. Terpening set out second generation Mayettes and Franquettes, expecting that these seedlings would produce true, but when they commenced to bear, behold his amazement at finding that ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various

... But still the enlarged experience could not but be of the utmost value. It was during these years that he saw Glamis Castle in its unspoiled state, during these that, in connection with the case of the unfortunate but rather happily named devotee of Bacchus and Venus, M'Naught, he explored Galloway, and obtained the decorations and scenery, if not the story, of Guy Mannering. He also repeated his visits to the English side of the Border, not merely on the occasion ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... dowager of the devotee class, is worth listening to. She has toiled through the entire ceremonies of the Holy Week. She has knelt close to the Pope, and declares his mode of giving the Benediction the most sublime thing on earth. The good lady has spared neither time nor ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... profligate Knot of Friends, that, in the first Volume, are represented so formidable as to terrify all the honest People in the Neighbourhood, who rejoice when they go up to Town again. She was to revenge on Lovelace his Miss Betterton, his French Devotee, his French Countess, the whole Hecatomb which he boasts that he had in different Climes sacrificed to his Nemesis, and all this by the natural Effects of his own vile Actions, and her honest noble Simplicity; whilst she steadily pursues the bright Path ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding

... was called a devotee. She left upon ordinary people the impression—the somewhat irritating impression—produced by such a person; it can only be described as the sense of strong water being perpetually poured into some abyss. She did her housework easily; she achieved ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... that looked to me mighty like those worn by the man that ambushed me. They didn't have any cap pieces across the toes. I'd noticed that even while he was shootin' at me. It struck me that it would be a good idea to look over his quarters in the basement. Shibo has one human weakness. He's a devotee of the moving pictures. Nearly every night he takes in a show on Curtis Street. The Chief lent me a man, an' last night we went through his room at the Paradox. We found there a flashlight, a bandanna handkerchief ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... Filipo, was in charge of the spectacle, for the gobernadorcillo was playing monte, of which he was a passionate devotee. Don Filipo was talking with old Tasio, who was on the point ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... states that he restored. Sargon placed under her protection, conjointly with Anu, the western gate of his city; and his son, Sennacherib, seems to have viewed Asshur and Ishtar as the special guardians of his progeny. Asshur-bani-pal, the great hunting king was a devotee of the goddess, whom he regarded as presiding over his special diversion, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... and to him he gave a cake, asking him to point out the road to Ram; but the Brahman only took the cake and went on his way without a word, Next the farmer met a Jogi or devotee, and to him he gave a cake, without receiving any help in return. At last, he came upon a poor man sitting under a tree, and finding out he was hungry, the kindly farmer gave him his last cake, and sitting down to rest beside him, ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... hung over the mantelpiece, the eyes and mouth of which were so beautiful, and the whole countenance so radiant with benignity and divine tranquillity, that I had a thousand times laid down my pen or my book to gather consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron saint. Whilst I was yet gazing upon it the deep tones of —- clock proclaimed that it was four o'clock. I went up to the picture, kissed it, and then gently walked out and closed ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... and evening.[989] Elsewhere, if here and there a daily service was kept up, the congregation was sure to consist only of a few women; and the Bridget or Cecilia who was regularly there, was sure of being accounted by not a few of her neighbours, 'prude, devotee, or Methodist.'[990] At the end of the century, and on till the end of the Georgian period, daily public prayers became rarer still. In the country they were kept up only 'in a few old-fashioned town churches.'[991] How much they had dwindled ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... and took flight. Victurnien went soon afterwards, but not before others had guessed his ecstatic condition; his face wore the expression peculiar to happy men, something between an Inquisitor's calm discretion and the self-contained beatitude of a devotee, fresh ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... holding the other kind in check. The earthward and the heavenward are in each of us, striving for mastery; but no imagination is vainer than that we can indulge both, or practise the impartiality with which Montaigne's singular devotee lighted one candle {152} to St. George and another to the dragon. If we would realise the type of perfect in the mind, we must not gratify "the penchant for revolt," but exert ourselves ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... a cry which alike startled friends and foes, for that name was known to one party as so connected with devotee adherence to Edward, to the other so synonymous with treachery, that united as it was with "to the rescue," some there were who paused to see whence and from whom it came. The banner of Scotland quickly banished doubt as to which part; that youthful warrior belonged; knights ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... that is in many ways incompatible with that implied by the pursuit of natural science. The joy of the Nature student like Darwin or any great naturalist is to know, to find out the reason of things and the meaning of things, to trace the footsteps of the creative energy; while the religious devotee is intent only upon losing himself in infinite being. True, there have been devout naturalists and men of science; but their devoutness did not date from their Nature studies, but from their training, or from the times in which ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... confidence in himself, and a sort of coarse diplomacy that supplied the place of shrewdness. To his failings and his virtues he added incontestable courage, and he would lay his hand upon the collar of the most dangerous criminal as tranquilly as a devotee dips his fingers in ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... in a deer in my net to-morrow for a sign'; and the next day the body of a deer appeared in his net. The stone then called upon the Gond to worship him as Bura Deo, but the Gond demurred to doing so himself, and said he would provide a substitute as a devotee. To this Bura Deo agreed, but said that Bachar, the Gond, must marry his daughter to the substituted worshipper. The Gond then set out to search for somebody, and in the village of Lafandi he found a Halba of the name of Konda, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... love she would have been shy, were she under tenfold greater obligations. She did not mean to be unmaidenly—she was not so, for her unconscious delicacy saved her—but she was at his feet as truly as the "devotee" is prostrate and helpless before the car of Juggernaut. But Roger was no grim idol, and he was too inexperienced, too modest to understand her. As he held her throbbing palm he looked a little wonderingly into her flushed face and tear-gemmed eyes that acknowledged him ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... and the cocoa tree, the rice-field, the tank, the huge trees, older than the Mogul empire, under which the village crowds assemble, the thatched roof of the peasant's hut, the rich tracery of the mosque where the imaum prays with his face to Mecca, the drums, and banners, and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging in the air, the graceful maiden, with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the riverside, the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, the turbans and the flowing robes, the spears ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... undramatic by the critics. The most vicious man in the play is not in the least a stage villain; indeed, he regards his own moral character with the sincere complacency of a hero of melodrama. The amiable devotee of romance and beauty is shewn at an age which brings out the futilization which these worships are apt to produce if they are made the staple of life instead of the sauce. The attitude of the clever young people to their elders is faithfully represented as one of pitiless ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... found therein sweetmeats, cakes, and those delicious confections to which the ladies are so partial. But of one of them—some curious devotee—seeing a little piece of silk, pulled it towards her, and exposed to view the habitation of the human compass, to the great confusion of the prelate, for laughter rang round the table like a discharge ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... of the older men, more rigid in his observances than the generality of Ahmed Ben Hassan's followers, was placidly absorbed in his devotions, prostrating himself and fulfilling his ritual with the sublime lack of self-consciousness of the Mohammedan devotee. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... and his high position? In this manner they travelled, side by side, lovingly together. Monsieur Peytel was not a lawyer merely, but a man of letters and varied learning; of the noble and sublime science of geology he was, especially, an ardent devotee." ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... pleased to designate it, his revolutionary opinions. The intrigue of the French government was successful, so far that the Queen of Spain was married to a Spanish Bourbon, brother to Don Enrique, a man whom the queen personally hated, a bigoted devotee and reactionary, whose fanaticism against liberty was morbid, and who was an avowed Carlist, openly denying the right of the Queen of Spain to the throne. Whatever could be supposed as likely to influence the fortunes of the young queen and of the Spanish nation, unfavourably, in connection ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... waking moment in the morning he had been conscious of an immeasurable sense of relief at his escape. He felt now that he had never deeply loved Miss Wildmere—that she had never touched the best feelings of his heart, because not capable of doing so. But he had admired her. He had been a devotee of society, and she had been to him the beautiful culmination of that phase of life. He saw he had endowed her with the womanly qualities which would make her the light of a home as well as of the ballroom, but he had also seen that the ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... cheeriness of the midday meal was in pleasing contrast to the gloom of breakfast. Even Amy forgot to mourn over missing the three-legged race, and Ruth, who, under Graham's tutelage, had become an ardent devotee of baseball, was reconciled to her failure to witness the unique contest between the Fats and the Leans. The morning had passed so rapidly, and so pleasantly on the whole, that every one was inclined to be hopeful regarding the remainder ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith



Words linked to "Devotee" :   metalhead, amorist, follower, bacchanal, groupie, bacchant, followers, devote, aficionado, aerophile, following



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