Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Enthusiasm
However, ’tis expedient to be wary:
Indifference certes don’t produce distress;
And rash enthusiasm in good society
Were nothing but a moral inebriety.
Byron—Don Juan. Canto XIII. St. 35.
No wild enthusiast ever yet could rest,
Till half mankind were like himself possess’d.
Cowper—Progress of Error. L. 470.
Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.
Isaac D’Israeli—Literary Character. Ch. XII. Last lines.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Emerson—Essay. On Circles. Last Par.
Zwang erbittert die Schwärmer immer, aber bekehrt sie nie.
Opposition embitters the enthusiast but never converts him.
Schiller—Cabale und Liebe. III. 1.
Sonderbarer Schwärmer!
Enthusiast most strange.
Schiller—Don Carlos. III. 10. 277.
Enthusiasm is that temper of the mind in which the imagination has got the better of the judgment.
Bishop Warburton—Divine Legation. Bk. V. App.