Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm originally meant inspiration or possession by a divine afflatus or by the presence of a god. Johnson's Dictionary, the first comprehensive dictionary of the English language, defines enthusiasm as "a vain belief of private revelation; a vain confidence of divine favour or communication." In current English vernacular the word simply means intense enjoyment, interest, or approval.

Sourced

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 226.

• However, 'tis expedient to be wary:
  Indifference certes don't produce distress;
  And rash enthusiasm in good society
  Were nothing but a moral inebriety.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto XIII, Stanza 35.

• No wild enthusiast ever yet could rest,
  Till half mankind were like himself possess'd.
  • William Cowper, Progress of Error, line 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, Chapter XII. Last lines.

• Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essay, On Circles, last paragraph.

• Zwang erbittert die Schwärmer immer, aber bekehrt sie nie.
  • Translation: Opposition embitters the enthusiast but never converts him.
  • Friedrich Schiller, Cabale und Liebe, III. 1.

• Sonderbarer Schwärmer!
  • Translation: Enthusiast most strange.
  • Friedrich 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, Book V, Appendix.