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Zealot   /zˈɛlət/  /zˈilət/   Listen
Zealot

noun
1.
A member of an ancient Jewish sect in Judea in the first century who fought to the death against the Romans and who killed or persecuted Jews who collaborated with the Romans.
2.
A fervent and even militant proponent of something.  Synonyms: drumbeater, partisan.



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"Zealot" Quotes from Famous Books



... Netherlands and crippling the overshadowing power of Spain. Still did he implore help for the oppressed. Long did he carry in his heart a picture of the queen—whom he adored in spite of her unworthiness—as the zealous and devoted champion of a great cause. But Elizabeth was no zealot, nor could she be made one. When Sidney at length realized that the queen could not be induced to move in the cause of the Netherlands, he made up his mind to go as a volunteer to the assistance of William, Prince of Orange, ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... gone while he walked in the crowds, feeling his remoteness; but he knew at last that he was not of the brotherhood of the zealots; that the very sense of humour by which he saw the fallacies of one zealot prevented him from becoming another. He lacked the zealot's conviction of his unique importance, yet one must be such a zealot to give a message effectively. He began to see that the world could not be lost; that whatever might be vital in his own message would, soon or late, be delivered by another. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

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

... zealot. "We are not wont to show an idle courtesy to that sex which requireth the stricter discipline.—What sayest thou, maid? Shall thy silken bridegroom suffer thy share of ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the zealot Auguste, my religious teaching was neglected on week days. On Sundays, if fine, I was taken to a Protestant church in Paris; not infrequently to the Embassy. I did not enjoy this at all. I could have done ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... mortal man! we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry; Whose mind but means his sum of thought, an essence of ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... No zealot, then, no sentimentalist, no devotee of the god Wish, have we here; but an imperturbable beholder, whose dauntless and relentless eyeballs, telescopic and microscopic by turns, can and will see what the fact is. If the universe be bad, as some dream, he will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... canvassing affairs, that are agitated in that province, and prevailing in it, rather gave him wrong than right measures of a Court. He was generally acknowledg'd a good scholar, and throughly verst in Ecclesiastical learning. He was a zealot in his heart both against Popery and Presbytery; but a great assertor of Church-authority, instituted by Christ and his Apostles, and as primitively practised; which notwithstanding, he really and freely acknowledged subject unto the secular authority. And ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... Zeal fervoro. Zealot fervorulo. Zealous fervora. Zebra zebro. Zenith zenito. Zephyr venteto. Zero nulo. Zest gusto. Zigzag zigzago. Zinc zinko. Zinc-worker zinkisto. Zodiac zodiako. Zone terzono. Zoology zoologio. Zoophyte zoofito. Zouave ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... his respect for his father, interrupted him brusquely, as if he were an imprudent child. In his eyes there glowed the harsh expression of the impassioned zealot. ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... this definition are at large in America each reader may judge for himself. Personally, I find them extraordinarily numerous, and of so many varieties, from the mere borrower of opinions to the deeply convinced zealot, that it seems wiser to analyze Anglomania than to discuss the various types that possess it. And in this analysis let us exclude from the beginning such very real, but temporary, grievances against the English as spring from Irish oppressions, trade rivalries, or the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... took a horse and a valuable bundle of goods belonging to his father and sold both at Falingo. Instead of turning the proceeds over to his father, Francis offered them to the priest of St. Damian, who, fearing the father's displeasure, refused to accept the stolen funds. The young zealot, "who had utter contempt for money," threw the gold on one of the windows of the church. Such is the story as gleaned from Catholic sources. The heretics, who have criticised Francis for this conduct, ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... entreaties, police and all, we followed him into the street, where, displaying a histrionic ability which was truly French, he proceeded to reconstruct and rehearse his great adventure with the enthusiasm of a zealot. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... and the conniving lie by which he had saved her and her lover. That at this crucial moment he had failed to "testify" to guilt and wickedness; that he firmly believed—such is the inordinate vanity of the religious zealot—that he had denied Him in his effort to shield HER; and that he had broken faith with the husband who had entrusted to him the custody of his wife's honor, seemed to him more terrible than her faithlessness. In his first horror he had dreaded to see her, lest her very confession—he ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... trouble yourself, Judas, about the speech of this zealot; let him go and be a follower of the false prophet. Thou dost thy duty as a disciple of Moses in ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead

... even after he had become a priest under the name of Paulus. Blind obedience was exacted from him by his order, and when he refused to betray a king's confession he was sent as missionary to India. After his return he became a zealot, exacting severe penance from sinners, and through his severity driving a man to suicide. In his remorse he, too, had sought refuge in this wilderness, where no one knew him, and where one day he found Lazarus, took him ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... appeals to Allah, he felt totally at a loss to know what to do for the material benefit of the zealot. He was afraid that he would die from exhaustion. He was relieved when Abdul and the bearers came to his assistance. Abdul soon persuaded the man to drink some of the water which he had brought in a ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... this light, too, she is painted in the poems of Shakspeare. To Voltaire, again, whose trade it was to war with every kind of superstition, this child of fanatic ardour seemed no better than a moonstruck zealot; and the people who followed her, and believed in her, something worse than lunatics. The glory of what she had achieved was forgotten, when the means of achieving it were recollected; and the Maid of Orleans was deemed the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... are full of meanness and intrigues. The little I have seen of them has disgusted me for ever. They spy one upon another. It is who shall prejudice a fellow-priest in order to supplant him, or play the zealot in Monseigneur's presence. When I was the Bishop's secretary, hardly a day passed without my being witness to some shameful piece of tale bearing. You must weigh all your words, cover your looks and have a ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... series passing from the simplest to the most complicated. The dates are of no importance. We might put at one of the extremes the works of the Prussian General, von Bernhardi, and at the other the gigantic lucubration of a famous pan-German zealot, a neophite, a convert, almost a deserter, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... removed from the partisan strife pertaining naturally to populous centres, he would be careful in forming opinions, conservative in actions, and unlikely to yield to the influence of faction or partisanship. A moral man for that day, but neither a propagandist nor a zealot, he was unlikely to favour any sect or establishment of religion—a danger against which every possible ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... own purposes, William had perhaps chosen his minister too wisely. The objects of the two colleagues were not always the same. Lanfranc, sprung from Imperialist Pavia, was no zealot for extravagant papal claims. The caution with which he bore himself during the schism which followed the strife between Gregory and Henry brought on him more than one papal censure. Yet the general tendency of his administration was towards ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... now reigned over us these thirty years, and though during so long a time they may have fallen into errors, or may have committed faults, (as what Government is without?) yett I will defy the most sanguin zealot to find in history a period equal to this in which Scotland possessed so uninterrupted a felicity, in which liberty, civil and religious, was so universally enjoyed by all people of whatever denomination—nay, by the open and avowed ennemys of the family and constitution, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... but the word lie, upon which the conceit turned, was not so expressed in Latin, as to admit a double meaning, or so fair a construction as Sir Henry thought, in English. About eight years after, this Album fell into the hands of Gaspar Scioppius, a restless zealot, who published books against King James, and upbraided him for entertaining such scandalous principles, as his embassador had expressed by that sentence: This aspersion gained ground, and it became fashionable in Venice to write this definition in several glass windows. These ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... Zealot, censure not the toper, guileless though thou keep thy soul: Certain 'tis that sins of others none shall write upon ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... magistrate by the name of the Church.[6] But this is not all; for, in the very next line he says, "It was hoped the nation would have followed this example." You see the faction begins already to speak out; this is an open demand for the abbey-lands; this furious zealot would have us priest-ridden again, like our popish ancestors: but, it is to be hoped the government will take timely care to suppress such audacious attempts, else we have spent so much blood and treasure to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... all the contempt, which he ought rightfully to share with a whole party, a whole sect, a whole nation, a whole generation. Perhaps, no human being has suffered so much from this propensity of the multitude as Robespierre. He is regarded, not merely as what he was, an envious, malevolent zealot, but as the incarnation of Terror, as Jacobinism personified. The truth is, that it was not by him that the system of terror was carried to the last extreme. The most horrible days in the history of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris were those which immediately preceded the ninth of Thermidor. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... put her sinful life behind her, enter the retreat of a saintly sisterhood and die in grace, while he, falling at the last into the clutches of carnal lust, repented of his good deed and wrought his own damnation. Changing the name of the unfortunate zealot from Paphnuce to Athanal, M. Louis Gallet made an opera-book out of France's story, and Massenet set it to music. It is a delectable story, but it fell into the hands of master craftsmen, and the admirers of "art for art's sake" and at any cost, have ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... Whose little finger is as heavy As loins of patriarchs, prince-prelate, And bishop-secular. This zealot Is of a mungrel, diverse kind; 1225 Cleric before, and lay behind; A lawless linsie-woolsie brother, Half of one order, half another; A creature of amphibious nature; On land a beast, a fish in water; 1230 That always preys on grace or sin; A sheep without, a wolf within. This fierce inquisitor ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... to some extent he must be, and a violent one he may be; and in that case he is not a good person to check the party. When the leading sect (so to speak) in Parliament is doing what the nation do not like, an instant appeal ought to be registered and Parliament ought to be dissolved. But a zealot of a Premier will not appeal; he will follow his formulae; he will believe he is doing good service when, perhaps, he is but pushing to unpopular consequences, the narrow maxims of an inchoate theory. At such a minute a constitutional king—such as Leopold the First was, ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... Schoolmaster and I are not friends. He is something of a zealot, and conceives it his mission to weed out the small superstitions of the countryside and plant exact information in their stead. He comes from up the country—a thin, clean-shaven town-bred man, whose black habit and tall hat, though considerably bronzed, refuse ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... New York City he continued his familiar methods, and deepened the impression he had created. He carried boldness to the point of audacity and glorified the "square deal." Whatever he undertook, he drove through with the remorselessness of a zealot. He made no pretense of treating humbugs and shams as if they were honest and real; and when he found that the laws which were made to punish criminals, were used to protect them, no scruple prevented him from achieving the spirit ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... of oratory. You say that you will conquer with the spirit. Come with me! Descend into the valley and inspire them with ardour. The legions are ours, our weapons are of perfect temper, nothing is wanting but fire, and that you have. The king must be allied with the zealot, otherwise the kingdom cannot be conquered. Come down with me. Tell them that you are the prophet. Incite them against Jerusalem, and exclaim: 'It is God's will!' If only fire can be made to burn within them, they will march like the very devil, overcome the foreigners, and you will instruct them ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... this child is more prone to literary learning, that to mechanics, this one to obstinacy and contentiousness, that to sensuality, and so of the rest. For though it is by the soul that a man learns, and by the act of his will and spiritual powers he becomes a glutton or a zealot, nevertheless the bodily organs concur and act jointly towards these ends. The native dispositions of the child's body for the acquisition of habits depend to an unascertained extent upon the habits of his ancestors. This is ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... she was interested a little for old acquaintance sake and because of the common Cause they served. For to himself, he had been still the same as before he ate from her hands the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Absorbed in his work, a zealot, a fanatic, conscious of all she had and of all he lacked, he had not noticed how his own mind had expanded, how broader ideas had come to him, how the confidence born of persistent thought gave force to his words and how the sincerity and passion that rang in his voice reached ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... in the most unreverent manner, making the Lord's house like an inn on a fair day, with their grievous yellyhooing. During the time of the psalm and the sermon, they behaved themselves better, but when the induction came on, their clamour was dreadful; and Thomas Thorl, the weaver, a pious zealot in that time, he got up and protested, and said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." And I thought I would have a hard and sore time of it ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt

... far too numerous even to catalogue, that scarify the puritans and their zealot tribe, The Cheats (1662), by Wilson, and Sir Robert Howard's The Committee (1662), which long kept the stage, and, in a modified form, The Honest Thieves, was seen as late as the second half of the nineteenth century, are pre-eminently the best. Both possess considerable merit and are worthy ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... ornamentation in the way of golden breastplates, two stones bright and shining, golden plates united at the back by rings, the sword of Laban, square stone boxes, cemented clasps, invisible blows, suggestions of Satan, and similar mummery born from the quickened imagination of a zealot. ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... a good man," thought Amine, as she descended—and Amine was right. Father Mathias was a good man; but, like all men, he was not perfect. A zealot in the cause of his religion, he would have cheerfully sacrificed his life as a martyr; but if opposed or thwarted in his views, he could then be cruel ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... in truth, a Jesuit, and as such a zealot; but he was not a liar or a hypocrite. Being human, he resented an insult. The saintly spirit in him was strong, yet not strong enough to breast the indignation which now dashed against it. For ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... the real meaning of the burden of the spirit given to the apostle Paul, but misinterpreted by him into the mechanico scenic scheme of the Judaized Christian Church. For when the mighty influx struck the brain of the persecuting zealot, revolutionizing his life, it came into connection with all the inflamed theories and convictions so deeply drilled therein by his Pharisaic education. These convictions, partly of a mere local and transient character, associated with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... labors of the followers of Loyola among the Indians has its beatific culmination in the life of this zealot and explorer. Pestilence and the Iroquois had ruined all the hopes of the Jesuits in the east. Their savage flocks were scattered, annihilated, driven farther in the fastnesses, or exiled upon islands. The shepherds ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... zealot, this English divine, In church and in state was of principles sound; Was truer than Steele to the Hanover line, And grieved that a Tory should live above ground. Shall a subject so loyal be hang'd by the nape, For no other crime ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... deposition, was spent in obscurity; nor did his successor in the bishoprick, subsequent to the reestablishment of Episcopacy at the Restoration,—Bishop Honeyman,—close his days more happily. He was struck in the arm by the bullet which the zealot Mitchell had intended for Archbishop Sharp; and the shattered bone never healed; "for, though he lived some years after," says Burnet, "they were forced to lay open the wound every year, for an exfoliation;" and his life was eventually shortened by his sufferings. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... was so abashed and confounded at this novel salutation, that he could only stammer out an incoherent reply; and he was evidently disposed to give the tactless zealot a piece of his mind, expressed in the language of the quarter-deck. When the solemn man took his leave, the disgusted captain said, "If ever I should be coming to your office again, and that man should be here, I wish you would send me word, and ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... Indians, than Satan wad strodge into Hell with a packlaid o' the souls o' proud professors on his braid shoulders. Ha, ha, ha! I think I see how the auld thief wad be gaun through his gizened dominions, crying his wares, in derision, "Wha will buy a fresh, cauler divine, a bouzy bishop, a fasting zealot, or a piping priest?" For a' their prayers an' their praises, their aumuses, an' their penances, their whinings, their howlings, their rantings, an' their ravings, here they come at last! Behold the end! Here go the rare and precious wares! A fat professor for a bodle, an' a lean ane for ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... turned and abruptly departed. A stranger near by, observing Joseph's amazement, said, quietly, "Rabbi Samuel is a zealot. Judas himself ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... zealot, sometimes very precise and peevish. But I have seen him pleasant enough in his way; much addicted to jealousy, but more to fondness; so that as he is often jealous without a cause, he's as often satisfied ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... by tradition with achievements not properly assignable to him, as the invention of the potter's wheel—though it had been in use for centuries before his time—and the production of various works of art which can scarcely have occupied the attention of a religious zealot. By order of the Empress Gensho, Gyogi was thrown into prison for a time, such a disturbing effect did his propagandism produce on men's pursuit of ordinary bread winning; but he soon emerged from durance and was taken into reverent favour by the Emperor Shomu, who attached four hundred priests ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... who, in the first days of the war, as in the later and the last, had his hours of discouragement and deep depression. For dejection of any sort, the wild excitement and boundless confidence of a zealot like Lane must have been somewhat of an antidote, also ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... disgrace, Fly in vast troops this apprehensive race; Instinctive tribes! their failing food they dread, And buy, with timely change, their future bread. Such are our guides; how many a peaceful head, Born to be still, have they to wrangling led! How many an honest zealot stol'n from trade, And factious tools of pious pastors made! With clews like these they thread the maze of state, These oracles explore, to learn our fate; Pleased with the guides who can so well deceive, Who cannot ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe

... in. "It is better so. This Tom Parker is a zealot even as was I—a man of science thinking only of his own discoveries. I am not sure he would discontinue his experiments even were he to receive my warning in all its horrible details. But you, O Man-Called-Bert, through your love of his sister and by your influence over him, ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent



Words linked to "Zealot" :   Hebrew, proponent, advocator, Israelite, partisan, drumbeater, nonpartisan, exponent, Simon the Zealot, dogmatist, Jew, bigot, advocate, doctrinaire



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