No wild enthusiast ever yet could rest,
Till half mankind were like himself possessed. [ Cowper ]

The enthusiast suffers his imagination to follow his heart. [ G. Crabb ]

Opposition always inflames the enthusiast, never converts him. [ Schiller ]

Opposition, may inflame the enthusiast, but never converts him. [ Schiller ]

The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast, that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way - an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body. [ Hazlitt ]

The stoical exemption which philosophy affects to give us over the pains and vexations of human life is as imaginary as the state of mystical quietism and perfection aimed at by some crazy enthusiast. [ Scott ]

The enthusiast has been compared to a man walking in a fog; everything immediately around him, or in contact with him, appears sufficiently clear and luminous; but beyond the little circle of which he himself is the centre, all is mist and error and confusion. [ Colton ]

It is impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain. A man who would endeavor to fix an enthusiast by argument might as well attempt to spread quicksilver with his finger. [ Goldsmith ]

Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs, are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm. [ Helps ]