Excessive Zeal Quotes

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

I remember a passage in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: "I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.

Partisanship is a fire not to be quenched. It demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its busting into a flame, lest instead of warming, it should consume.

Above all gentlemen, not too much zeal.

Fanaticism is the danger of the world, and always has been, and has done untold harm. I might almost say that I was fanatical against fanaticism.

I did that all the more, if I may say so, because I was aware of the fact that there is an inclination to go to extremes in German people, and in the German character generally.

Anything that needs to be labelled 'The Entertainment' usually isn't - especially when it is provided by the endlessly enthusiastic Joel or Nadia wearing trainers and a whistle.

Morality is the tendency to pour out the baby with the bathwater.

Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.

There is not a more melancholy object than a man who has his head turned with religious enthusiasm.

That is what I like; that is what a young man ought to be. Whatever be his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and leave him no sense of fatigue.

The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation.We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.

Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes: they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state.

There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have been fanatics in false religion; in the bloody religions of the heathen.

We may so seize on virtue, that if we embrace it with an overgreedy and violent desire, it may become vicious.

Spiritual infirmities such as tepidity are caused, not only by chills but also by fevers, that is, by excessive zeal.

Determined secularists view these as residual inconsistencies that they have not yet go around to extirpating and that may not be worth bothering about... Form the secularist perspective it may be that the essential battles have been won and excessive zeal in pressing a final mopping-up operation might only excited further public hostility.

I wish I was a little less... passionate. I'm a very passionate person.

The zeal of fools offends at any time.

The passions of a revolution are apt to hurry even good men into excesses.

Is it possible to be overzealous, to destroy that which you hope to save-so that nothing is left but emptiness.

I am a man of vehement disposition, with violent enthusiasms, and extreme immoderation in all my passions.

Sinful zeal doth make men doubly sinful.

We often excuse our own want of philanthropy by giving the name of fanaticism to the more ardent zeal of others.

A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.