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Fanatic   Listen
adjective
Fanatic  adj.  Pertaining to, or indicating, fanaticism; extravagant in opinions; ultra; unreasonable; excessively enthusiastic, especially on religious subjects; as, fanatic zeal; fanatic notions. "But Faith, fanatic Faith, once wedded fast To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fanatic" Quotes from Famous Books



... compromised with the constitutionals. The rector was therefore not received in the Cormon household, whose sympathies were all given to the curate of Saint-Leonard, the aristocratic parish of Alencon. Du Bousquier, that fanatic liberal now concealed under the skin of a royalist, knowing how necessary rallying points are to all discontents (which are really at the bottom of all oppositions), had drawn the sympathies of the middle ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... the past of his first love-dream, when he worshipped at the feet of Nora Beresford, and, with the whole-heartedness of the true fanatic, clothed his idol with every imaginable attribute of virtue and tenderness. To this day there remained a secret shrine in his heart wherein the Lady of his young ideal was still enthroned, although it was long since he had ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,

... it that falls under our gaze. The story of Nathan Hale will become newly alive and will thrill as never before. Over against Nathan Hale we shall set Philip Nolan for the sake of comparison and contrast. Even though our pupils may regard Joan of Arc as a fanatic, her heroism and her fidelity to her convictions will shine forth as a star in the night and her example as illustrating loyalty will be as seed planted in fertile soil. In our quest for exemplars we shall find the ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... was the ballet, already well-known, of the Polovtsy warriors, executed with the extreme of fanatic fervour and frenzy. The art of M. MICHEL FOKINE can turn his Russians into Tartars without a scratch of the skin. BORODINE'S music, taking on a more barbaric quality as the action travelled further East, here touched its climax, and the final scene, where Prince Igor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... truth appears before Rome as represented by a deputy of Caesar. He is a fanatic, says the Roman; then he goes his way, and leaves Him to be put to death. But ere long, a dull hoarse murmur of the nations, extending through all the length and breadth of the mighty empire, gives token that He who was dead is alive again, and ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... are others in the saddest districts of Ireland who must also be taken into account. To the few—for they are few—who thrive by deeds of darkness whenever the Union is attacked, these signs of coming change suggest a more tragic interpretation, from which the fanatic and the place-hunter would recoil—when too late. The blatant publican who strangles a neighbourhood in the toils of usury and illicit drink, and the bestial survivor of half-forgotten murder-rings take note of these signs. The atavism of cruelty returns. ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... that those two people did not exchange another word together that day, but Eurie had got her thrust when and where she least expected it. She had taken it for granted that not a single fanatic was of their party. In the secret of her wise heart she denominated all the earnest people at Chautauqua fanatics, and all the half-hearted people hypocrites. Only she, who stood outside and felt nothing, was sincere ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy

... a real lively project. Solar energy into power on a utilitarian level. The man is fanatic, of course, but with his plans he could actually be producing in another five years." He lit a cigarette, drew on it as though ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse

... Julian with the absurd eccentricities of his private manners and with the futility of his public acts. He noted all the Apostate's foibles by the side of his virtues and his magnanimities. He traced without hesitation the course of that strange insurrection which hurled a coarse fanatic from the throne, only to place in his room a literary pedant with inked fingers and populous beard. He accepted everything, from the parasites to the purple slippers. The dangers of so humble an attendance upon history were escaped with ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... is what no one has ever ventured to dispute; but never did either feeling, strong, persistent, indestructible, though it might be, rise in turbulent waves around his soul. In religion he was a bigot,—not a fanatic. "The tranquillity of my dominions and the security of my crown," he said, "rest on an unqualified submission in all essential points to the authority of the Holy See." In the same deliberate and impressive style, not in that of a wild and reckless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... received severe gashes. The group were brought to a standstill, and they stood in a little circle while the attack continued. One sepoy was stabbed to the heart by a fanatic, who rushed at his bayonet and, pushing himself along, fell dead as he struck his ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty

... amended in Queen Elizabeth's reign, in 1562, but at the accession of James I—himself a fanatic and bigot in religious matters, and the author of the famous Daemonologie—a new law was enacted with exact definition of the crime, which remained in force more than a hundred years. ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor

... of this preaching: you think of all these things, and a thousand more, better than I can say them. I turn to your letter. Elder H., for whom you ask, is a very good man,-very friendly to me; but le is a terrible fanatic. He has Unitarian revivals that might match with any of them. It is a curious fact that the Christians, as they call themselves, Unitarian as they ire, form the most extravagant, fiery, fanatical sect ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... You cannot reason about the creature; you can only make sure that it has every quality likely to secure success in the struggle for existence; and it is well to be careful how you state your opinions in promiscuous company, for the fanatic cat-lover is only a little less wildly ferocious than ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... eyes in the emaciated face, the face of a saint and fanatic, smiled at her fears so tenderly that Margaret's heart was ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... blessing, or ended without returning thanks. "He had 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, and he considered the suppression ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... interested, sir, in what you have said, and in the exceedingly frank and temperate manner in which you have treated the subject. If all Abolitionists were like you, there would be much less opposition to your enterprise. But, sir, depend upon it, that hair-brained, reckless, violent fanatic, Garrison, will damage, if he does not shipwreck, any cause.' Stepping forward, I replied, 'Allow me, sir, to introduce you to Mr. Garrison, of whom you entertain so bad an opinion. The gentleman you have ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... that he could have touched these simple people had he not looked the part of prophet and saint. The old Grimshaw was gone. In his place an emaciated fanatic, unconscious of appetite, unaware of self, with burning eyes and tangled beard! That finished ugliness turned spiritual—a self-flagellated aesthete. He claimed that he could enter the shadowy confines of the "next ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... disappear into the evening. Those who are marking time around the obscure fanatic are growling, "He's not only bad, he's ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... shrill unwomanish voice that must be Mord, With "Let us burn him—burn him house and all." And then a grave and trembling voice replied, "Although my life hung on it, it shall not be." Again the cunning fanatic voice went on "I say the house must burn above his head." And the unlifted voice, "Why wilt thou speak Of what none wishes: ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... Joel so spake, his Highness Duke Francis fell into a deep fit of musing. At last he exclaimed, "Good Joel, you are a fanatic, an enthusiast—surely we know the name of God; or what hinders us ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... there are those who pause in the hurried rush to listen to the call of a life that is more real. How often have we seen them, David, jostled and ridiculed by their fellows, pushed aside and forgotten, as incompetent or unworthy. He who sees and hears too much is cursed for a dreamer, a fanatic, or a fool, by the mad mob, who, having eyes, see not, ears and hear not, and refuse ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright

... invulnerable fortress, but though some 4000 lives were sacrificed the army retreated baffled. For centuries after this, the banner of the Hessian Landgraf waved from its battlements, none daring to attack it. Then the fanatic Gallic forces of the Revolution entered the Rhineland, and laid the magnificent castle ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland

... murderer, swindler, forger, burglar, and common pickpocket, to gain over the allegiance of Frenchmen—it is to-day our painful duty to announce a THIRD invasion—yes, a third invasion. The wretched, superstitious, fanatic Duke of Bordeaux has landed at Nantz, and has summoned the Vendeans and the Bretons to mount ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 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, ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... four years and which he flung away almost in one day. He rushed even recklessly to London; where he was quite unsuccessful and practically starved for six years. If I had mentioned this act on the first page of this book it would have seemed to have either the simplicity of a mere fanatic or else to cover some ugly escapade of youth or some quite criminal looseness of temperament. But Bernard Shaw did not act thus because he was careless, but because he was ferociously careful, careful especially of the one thing needful. What was he thinking about when ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... scale—having nine of his frames in full work,—when unhappily ill fortune again overtook him. Henry IV., his protector, on whom he had relied for the rewards, honours, and promised grant of privileges, which had induced Lee to settle in France, was murdered by the fanatic Ravaillac; and the encouragement and protection which had heretofore been extended to him were at once withdrawn. To press his claims at court, Lee proceeded to Paris; but being a protestant as well as a foreigner, his representations were treated with neglect; and worn out with vexation ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... Atheist, thus, and fanatic in turn, holding both life and death in equal horror, she lived on for several years. But what completed the torments of her miserable existence, was that very object to which she had sacrificed every natural affection. She was deeply annoyed ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... very rich and very sumptuous, but it must give a fanatic coming here from far away the same feeling a person gets when he has a cold and asks for a hot drink and is given a glass of ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... the two sections of the Union was not the work of this or that enthusiast or fanatic. It was the consequence of a movement in mass of two different forms of civilization in different directions, and the men to whom it was attributed were only those who represented it most completely, or who talked longest and loudest about it. Long before the accents of those famous statesmen referred ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... of gas. Security takes care of that. When I said where we were going and that I wanted the car, Dad had everything checked. If I live through this, I'll bet I stay a fanatic about ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... of Malaga: the silken pavilions of the Court, the great encampment of nobility with its arms and banners extending in a semicircle to the seashore, all glistening and moving in the bright sunshine. There was added excitement at this time at an attempt to assassinate Ferdinand and Isabella, a fanatic Moor having crept up to one of the pavilions and aimed a blow at two people whom he mistook for the King and Queen. They turned out to be Don Alvaro de Portugal, who was dangerously wounded, and Columbus's ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... an investigator who approaches their study with a knowledge only of Christian religion and theology finds it difficult at first to recognize that the same fundamental ideas, although of far cruder nature, enter into the conceptions of an idol-worshiping fanatic living in the heart of Africa. But, nevertheless, beliefs that fall within the scope of the definitions adopted above are to be found among all men, and they must be examined so that their agreements and differences may be demonstrated, and their common elements may be explained ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... Hinchingbroke by Lynne. To my own house, meeting G. Vines, and drank with him at Charing Cross, now the King's Head Tavern. With my wife to my father's, where met with Swan,—[William Swan is called a fanatic and a very rogue in other parts of the Diary.]—an old hypocrite, and with him, his friend and my father, and my cozen Scott to the Bear Tavern. To my father's and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... entry stood the large form of the friar who had rendered such useful aid to a stricken traveler. The light of Mon's lamp showed this holy man to be large and heavy of face, with the narrow forehead of the fanatic. With such a face and head, this could not be a clever man. But he is a wise worker who has tools of different temper in his bag. Too fine a steel may snap. Too delicately fashioned an instrument may turn in the hand when suddenly ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... from a visit to Salamieh last night. He tells me the darweesh Achmet et-Tayib is not dead, he believes that he is a mad fanatic and a communist. He wants to divide all property equally and to kill all the Ulema and destroy all theological teaching by learned men and to preach a sort of revelation or interpretation of the Koran of his own. 'He ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... at all times. Why is it that they can not stand before the armies of the western people? It is lack of organization. The instinct of self-preservation which at the last moment dominates them utterly, is not opposed by discipline. We have often seen fanatic eastern peoples, implicitly believing that death in battle means a happy and glorious resurrection, superior in numbers, give way before discipline. If attacked confidently, they are crushed by their own weight. In close combat the dagger is better than the bayonet, ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq

... serious. Nevertheless, during the time that Helbeck and Augustina were pacing the sands together, Fountain went through a good deal of uneasiness. One never knew how or where this damned poison in the blood might break out again. That young fanatic, a Jesuit already by the look of him, would of course try all their inherited Mumbo Jumbo upon her; and what woman is at bottom anything more than the prey ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... musical-box and a spy-glass, asking many questions. From all I could learn by my visit to this pretender there was nothing in their religion to elevate, but everything to degrade. With them to rob and murder were virtuous deeds. "Slay the imps" was their watchword. Gordon found in this fanatic a foe of no mean order. But he soon found too that courage and faith in God had done and would still lead to victory. In a letter home he says—"I am afraid you will be much vexed at my having taken the command of the Sung-kiang ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle

... it. His visit was, I believe, prompted by the affection he bears me, but he appeared utterly incapable of understanding the depth of feeling under which that letter was written. The editor's remarks were deeply trying to him. Friend B. seemed to think they were the ravings of a fanatic, and that the bare mention of my precious brother's name was a disgrace to his character, when coupled with mine in such a cause and such a paper, or rather in a cause advocated in such a way. I was so astonished ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... future architect and stored the incident for the Romance that was to be biography. When he organized a baseball club, they saw in him the budding leadership that should make him a ruler of men. Even Grant's odd mania to take up the cause of the weak—often foolish causes that revealed a kind of fanatic chivalry in him—Mary noted too; and saw the youth a mailed knight in the Great Battle that should precede and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... he cried hoarsely. "The trumpets! Didn't you hear them?" The light in his eyes was fanatic. Instinctively Valerie shrank away. Regardless, he let her go. "I forgot. Gramarye—I'm pledged to her. It's too late, Valerie. Oh, why did you come?" He buried his face in his hands. "You'll never understand," he muttered. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... you're a fanatic!" sneered Eugenia, and swept herself out of the room with high head, knowing that the wisest thing she could do was to depart while the ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... noisy, or troublesome upon unimportant points, the creed is flexible, and the mother will not quarrel with her child, for his earnestness may convince and lead astray more valuable sons and daughters. She will establish a new order, of which the stubborn fanatic shall be founder; the new order is built into the old church organization, and its founder becomes a dignitary of the ecclesiastical establishment. Instead of becoming a dangerous heretic and schismatic, he is attached to orthodoxy by ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... deciding how to answer it. He was soothed and quieted by his loneliness, and his irritation had disappeared: he regarded the letter from a youthfully philosophical standpoint, pleased with his moderation, as the work of a fanatic; he was considering only whether he would yield, for politeness' sake, to the importunity, or answer shortly and decisively. It seemed to him remarkable that a mature and experienced man could write such ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... pillar of the Wagner-Verein, Erich Lauber, had been manager of a chemical works until four years before: then he had given up everything to become a conductor. He had succeeded by force of will, and because he was very rich. He was a Bayreuth fanatic: it was said that he had gone there on foot, from Munich, wearing pilgrim's sandals. It was a strange thing that a man who had read much, traveled much, practised divers professions, and in everything displayed ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... the cross, and walking leisurely forward, seized the idol on the ass's back, broke it over his knee, and flung the portions into the crowd. For a few minutes they stared on him with astonishment, then some women fell upon him with their nails and teeth, and tore the poor fanatic till he fell bleeding and lifeless ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... make certain assertions from his painfully acquired experience, such as the unfailing sexual agency in the causation of neurotic manifestations, and that his experience of many years has as yet shown no exception to this rule, which quite naturally provoked a good deal of bitter and fanatic criticism not only from lay people but from experienced physicians. The cause for this lies in the nature of the thing itself, that much tabooed subject of sexuality. Unfortunately, as Hitschmann[6] says, physicians in their personal ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... went down to the ground and foraged through the woods. Jamison carried one of Johnny Simms' guns, which he regarded with acute suspicion, and Bell carried cameras. They photographed trees and underbrush, first as atmosphere and then with fanatic attention to leaves and fruits or flowers. Bell got pictures of one of the small, furry bipeds that Cochrane and Holden had spied when Babs was with them. He got a picture of what he believed to be a spider-web—it was thicker and heavier and huger than any web on Earth—and ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... devils in hell, at another the Beatific Glory of God. His native country did not appreciate him, and he left it to wander on from university to university, publishing his ravings. At Leyden he met with the works of Boehme, another fanatic, who wrote a strange book, entitled Aurora, which was suppressed by the magistrates. The reading of this author was like casting oil into the fire. Poor Kuhlmann became wilder still in his strange fanaticism, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... 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 ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... week after week the strike dragged on. Daily strength departed from it and entered into Bonbright Foote, Incorporated. The men had embarked upon it with enthusiasm, many of them with fanatic determination; but with the advent in their home of privation, of hunger, their zeal was transmuted into heavy determination, lifeless stubbornness. Idleness hung heavily on their hands, and small coins that should have passed ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... on the angry fanatic of spiritism, "if you weren't one of them people that take no more account of a man than if he were a beast. You would be capable, I don't doubt, to deny the possession of an immortal soul ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad

... so, and are so nice, They hate conformity, though 'tis in vice. Some are for patent hierarchy; and some, Like the old Gauls, seek out for elbow room; Their arbitrary governors disown, And build a conventicle stage of their own. Fanatic beaux make up the gaudy show, And wit alone appears incognito. Wit and religion suffer equal fate; Neglect of both attends the warm debate. For while the parties strive and countermine, Wit will as well ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe

... to see all new boys in my study at nine o'clock." It was Clarke, the head of the House, who spoke. He was tall, with pince-nez, one of those brilliant scholars who are too brilliant to get scholarships. He was a fanatic in many ways, a militarist essentially, a firebrand always. There was bound to be trouble during his reign. He could never let anything alone. He was ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... lines, instead of trusting to the rush of sudden valour, and the tactics of the tournament! She deliver France! On a much smaller argument and to put down a less ambition, the half serious, half amused adviser has bidden a young fanatic's ears to be boxed on many an unimportant occasion, and has often been justified in so doing. There would be a half hour of gaiety after poor Laxart, crestfallen, had got his dismissal. The good man must have turned back to Jeanne, where she waited for him in courtyard or antechamber, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... been introduced to no avail. The Moro could be no more treacherous if his ancestors had sprung from tigers' wombs. A Moro boy, employed for years by one of my American acquaintances at Iligan, rewarded his master recently by cutting his throat at night. As superstitious as he is fanatic and uncivilized, the Moro is a failure as a member of the human race. Even the children are the incarnation of the fiend. There was that boy at Iligan who worked at the officer's club, and who hung over the roulette-wheel ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... him well as he appeared that day. From what I had heard I was prepared to see a hard-faced impostor or a fanatic with frenzy in his eyes. He was a man of middle stature, with a face of striking beauty and benignity, eyes of mingled light and warmth, and auburn hair falling over his shoulders. It was not strange that he looked pale and haggard; for he had passed through ...
— The Centurion's Story • David James Burrell

... memorial brasses, of which there were many in the Cathedral, as appears by the numerous incised stones in different parts of the church, many of them were evidently of a rich and elaborate character, but all, with the above exception, have disappeared by the act of the mercenary or the fanatic. The first is a memorial to Bishop Goodrich (1534-1554), a singular instance of a hot reformer commemorated by a brass in which are pourtrayed all the ecclesiastical vestments, he holds his crozier in his left ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous

... 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 Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the largest ever held in Orham. The little house was crowded. Old friends, who had drifted away from the fanatic in his latter days, came back to pay tribute to the strong man whom they had known and loved. There was some discussion among the captains as to who should preach the funeral sermon. Elsie had left this question to Captain Eri for settlement, and the ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... a near scream. What a waste of oratorical and perhaps organizational energy, I mused as I strode along rapidly, still intent on escaping the fanatic. Under different circumstances, I thought, a man like this might turn out to be a capable clerk or minor executive. Suddenly I had ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... which militated against such an undertaking, there were pressing reasons for the Emperor to get closer to Germany, in order to watch over that country and to see what was going on in France, where there had been a conspiracy whose leaders had been, for one day, in control of the capital. A fanatic, General Malet, had tossed a spark into Paris which could have started a fire, which, had he not encountered a man as far-seeing and energetic as Adjutant-major Laborde, might have put an end ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... 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

... his judgment. He set himself to watch. In his inmost heart there was a strange assumption of the right to watch, and, if need be, to act. Julie's instinct had told her truly. Delafield, the individualist, the fanatic for freedom—he, also, had his instinct of tyranny. She should not destroy herself, the dear, weak, beloved ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... few reformers who have not in some measure mixed their love of man with hate of men; his quarrel was with error, and not with the persons who were in it. He was so gently steadfast in his opinions that no one ever thought of him as a fanatic, though many who held his opinions were assailed as fanatics, and suffered the shame if they did not win the palm of martyrdom. In early life he was a communist, and then when he came out of Brook Farm into the world which he was so well fitted to adorn, and which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... seriously concern us. As a matter of fact, in modern man's wild chase after wealth and pleasure, it is only one person out of every ten thousand who pauses to regard such causes, unless cornered by some protectionist fanatic, held fast ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... 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

... love of order, seemliness, and good taste has led the Anglican Church along a middle path between what a seventeenth century divine called 'the meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome and the squalid slutterny of fanatic conventicles.'" ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... now!" gasped Mr. 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 me and my wife, and like the creature I pictured you ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... office and all state, Serenely wise, magnanimously great; Not as the pride of Oriel, or the star Of this host or of that in creed's hot war, But as the noble spirit, stately, sweet, Ardent for good without fanatic heat, Gentle of soul, though greatly militant, Saintly, yet with no touch of cloistral cant; Him England honours, and so bends to-day In reverent grief o'er NEWMAN's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various

... that gave him leisure and quiet for contemplation. He had no wish to bring in converts, to stir England into a frenzy of terror and anticipation. God gave him no command to spread his beliefs; even his father, fanatic though he had been, had cherished his own small company of saints as souls to whom these things, hidden deliberately from the outside ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... It was altogether a little struggle of human suffering. Within two hundred years the mansion had been erected, and by turns became the seat of baronial splendour and of civil feuds,—of the best and basest feelings of mankind;—the loyalty and hospitality of cavaliers; the fanatic outrages of Roundheads; and ultimately of wanton desolation! The gate through which Colonel Lilburne and his men entered, was blocked up with a hurdle; and the yard where his forces were marshalled was covered with high flourishing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various

... uncomfortable, as many people do when confronted by a confessed fanatic. His feelings were divided between surprise, a mild contempt, and an unease, ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole

... for murder and executed. This foolish and criminal invasion was the work of a fanatic who all his lifetime had been a violent opposer of slavery, and who while in Kansas had participated more or less in the Osawatamie murders. His son was killed by the "border ruffians" near his home in Kansas, for which a fearful revenge was taken ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... What mad fanatic Burley, what god-succoured insolent Achilles, ever had such cause to swell with wrath as at that moment had Dr Fillgrave? Had I the pen of Moliere, I could fitly tell of such medical anger, but with no other pen can ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... tendency of the system of "I am better than thou," whether it be practised by a Catholic priest of the hedge-school, by a fanatic bawler about new light, or by a fierce and uncompromising churchman. Faith, hope, and charity, are alike misinterpreted and misunderstood. Faith with these consists in blind or hypocritical devotion ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... which he received the sum of L200; and in this and the following year, he produced two works of fiction, entitled, "The Three Perils of Man," and "The Three Perils of Women," which together yielded him L300. In 1824, he published "The Confessions of a Fanatic;" and, in 1826, he gave to the world his long narrative poem of "Queen Hynde." The last proved unequal to his former poetical efforts. In 1826, Mr J. G. Lockhart proceeded to London to edit the Quarterly Review, taking along with him, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... one change the war will bring about that will make for world peace: a quickened general interest in its possibility. Another is the certainty that the war will increase the number of devoted and fanatic characters available for disinterested effort. Whatever other outcome this war may have, it means that there lies ahead a period of extreme economic and political dislocation. The credit system has been strained, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... 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 ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... fanatic glow. "You die," said she, "and I shall live, will live, to see how God will avenge you upon these evil-doers. I will live, that I may constantly think of you, and in every hour of the day address to God my prayers for ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... their knees, at the confessional, every hour in the day. The rich devotee has her favourite confessor, whom she consults and regales in private, at her own house; and this spiritual director generally governs the whole family. For my part I never knew a fanatic that was not an hypocrite at bottom. Their pretensions to superior sanctity, and an absolute conquest over all the passions, which human reason was never yet able to subdue, introduce a habit of dissimulation, which, like all other habits, is confirmed by use, till at length they become ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... "The fanatic preacher," he thought within himself, during some one of the chaplain's frequent discourses against the Church of Rome, "he little knows whose ears are receiving his profane doctrine, and with what contempt and abhorrence they hear his blasphemies against the holy ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... with a red-hot iron, and hurried on his execution. He was broken on the wheel, and was two hours in dying (June 22). Contrary to usage, a Protestant preacher was brought to attend him on the scaffold. He came most reluctantly, expecting insult, but not a taunt was uttered by the fanatic populace. "He came up the scaffold, great silence all about," Marsilly lay naked, stretched on a St. Andrew's cross. He had seemed half dead, his head hanging limp, "like a drooping calf." To greet the minister of his own faith, he raised himself, to the surprise ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... had become perfectly quiet and she felt wholly at ease, she would sit down, fold her hands, and give herself up to speechless meditation, an evil and fanatic dream playing over ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... entertained; or, again, as a sort of contemptuous acquittal of one, who after all has not wit enough to be wicked. But this is not at all what Mr. Kingsley proposes to himself in the antithesis which he suggests to his readers. Though he speaks of me as an utter dotard and fanatic, yet all along, from the beginning of his pamphlet to the end, he insinuates, he proves from my writings, and at length in his last pages he openly pronounces, that after all he was right at first, in thinking me ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... his command and the imminent danger of capture to which the solitary gun was again exposed, ordered a retirement on the detachment left near Behmaroo and the limbering up of the gun, to which a second limber had been sent out from the cantonments. The movement was scarcely begun when a rush of fanatic Afghans completely broke the square, and all order and discipline then disappeared. A regular rout set in down the hill toward cantonments, the fugitives disregarding the efforts of the officers to rally them, and the enemy in full pursuit, the Afghan cavalry ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... added, "But the darned fool fanatic and idealist Captain John will go just the same because he and Private Charlie are comrades in the oneness of the Big Idea of ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... dwelling-house, not being a toll-house, was laid in ashes; the first blood was shed by "Rebecca's company," as they call the rioters here. And here resides, rants, prays, and preaches, and scribbles sedition, an illiterate fanatic, who is recognised as an organ of one sect of Methodists, Whitfieldites publishing a monthly inflammatory Magazine, called Y Diwygiwr, (the "Reformer!")—God bless ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... was also employed on this public undertaking. It is in connection with it that Yangti's name will be preserved, as his wars, especially one with Corea, were not successful, and an ignominious end was put to his existence by a fanatic. His son and successor was also murdered, when the Soui dynasty came to an end, and with it the magnificent and costly palace erected at Loyang, which was denounced as only calculated "to soften the heart of a prince and ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... cannot think it at all necessary; Milnwood is an infirm, hypochondriac old man, who never meddles with politics, and loves his moneybags and bonds better than any thing else in the world. His nephew, I hear, was at the wappenschaw to-day, and gained the popinjay, which does not look like a fanatic. I should think they are all gone to bed long since, and an alarm at this time of night might kill the poor ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... degree. Then a man's house was his castle. He could shut himself up with his family and his retainers and be independent of society, even laugh at its impotent rage. No man's house is his castle now. He is at the mercy of every imbecile and every fanatic. His whole life is regulated by delicate mechanisms which can be put out of gear by a touch. There is nothing so fragile as civilisation, and no high civilisation has long withstood the manifold risks it is exposed to. Nowadays ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... as to 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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... to me! 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 says, that without criticism, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater

... far as 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 ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... gaze which drew it to the small boy almost under her horse's hoofs? (For he had held his ground. He was not afraid. Unlike the rest, his trust in her was limitless and unquestioning. And if she chose to ride him down, he would not care, no more than a fanatic worshipper beneath the wheels of a Juggernaut.) Now under her eyes his heart stood still, his knees shook. She did not smile; she did not recognize his naked, shameless adoration. And that too ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... buffet and swept it clean.... At one of these halts I ran into Nogin and Rykov, the seceding Commissars, who were returning to Moscow to put their grievances before their own Soviet, 1and further along was Bukharin, a short, red-bearded man with the eyes of a fanatic-"more Left than Lenin," they said ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... 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 ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... true; that is the way a man of wide reading and worldly experience, but not ungenerous impulses, does feel about the mere fanatic, who is at once a nuisance to humanity and an honour to human nature. Yet who can read that last line without feeling that Wilde is poised on the edge of a precipice of bathos; that the phrase comes very near to being quite startlingly silly. It is as in the case of Maeterlinck, let ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... to you, in perfect frankness, that the man who thinks the Negro problem has been settled is either a fanatic or a fool. I stand aghast at the problem. I don't believe civilization ever encountered one of greater magnitude. It casts a dark shadow over your churches, your government of the future. It is a great problem which ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 3, March, 1889 • Various

... Puritans have their 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 depend upon. The overcivilized ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... three preachers, ever preaching, Fill'd with eloquence and power:— One is old, with locks of white, Skinny as an anchorite; And he preaches every hour With a shrill fanatic voice, And a bigot's fiery scorn:— "Backward! ye presumptuous nations; Man to misery is born! Born to drudge, and sweat, and suffer— Born to labour and to pray; Backward!' ye presumptuous nations— Back!—be humble ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... event occurred, of no great importance in 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 movements. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... concession, as they regarded it, of allowing the Protestants to conduct public worship outside of the walls of towns. The Protestants accepted these terms, and sheathed the sword; but many of the more fanatic Catholics were greatly enraged at this toleration. The Guises, the most arrogant family of nobles the world has ever known, retired from Paris in indignation, declaring that they would not witness such a triumph of heresy. The decree which granted ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... 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 and more ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... towns of Flanders, and at last the wealthy Antwerp also, which by its mental activity and commercial resources had materially nourished the revolt, fell into the hands of the Spaniards. The Prince of Orange was assassinated by a fanatic. Alexander of Parma, who ascribed his victories to the Virgin Mary, pushed on his conquests gradually till they reached the Northern and ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... Ottmachau, but in two hours he can be here any day; and looks into everything; sorry that the cannonade does not yet answer. And remnants of suburbs are still crackling into flame; high Country-Houses of Kreuzherren, of Jesuits; a fanatic people seemingly all set against us. 'If Neisse will not yield of good-will, needs is it must be beaten to powder,' wrote his Majesty to Jordan in these circumstances, as we read above. Roth is sorry to observe, the Prussians have ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... bird haunted me. I had to let it go. Since I have seized my own liberty I am a fanatic for freedom. It is now a year ago I launched on my great adventure. I have had hard times, been hungry, cold, weary. I have worked harder than ever I did and discouragement has slapped me on the face. Yet the year has been the happiest of ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... to excite concern. The reported massacres of Christians in Armenia and the development there and in other districts of a spirit of fanatic hostility to Christian influences naturally excited apprehension for the safety of the devoted men and women who, as dependents of the foreign missionary societies in the United States, reside in Turkey under the guaranty of law and ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... who had attained it to grave distortions of character. Affections and impulses which were denied their healthy and natural vent either became wholly atrophied or took other and morbid forms, and the hard, cruel, self-righteous fanatic, equally ready to endure or to inflict suffering, was a not unnatural result. But whatever may have been its failures and its exaggerations, Catholic asceticism was at least a great school for disciplining and strengthening the will, and the ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky



Words linked to "Fanatic" :   partizan, rabid, fanatical, fanatism, passionate



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