enthusiasm quotes

To fight for the right, to abhor the imperfect, the unjust, or the mean, to swerve neither to the right hand nor the left, to care nothing for flattery or applause or odium or abuseit is so easy to have any of them in Indianever to let your enthusiasm be soured or your courage grow dim but to remember that the Almighty has placed your hand on the greatest of his ploughs, in whose furrow the nations of the future are germinating and taking shape, to drive the blade a little forward in your time and to feel that somewhere among those millions you have left, a little justice, or happiness or prosperity, a sense of manliness or moral dignity, a springof patriotism, a dawn of intellectual enlightenmentora stirringofduty whereit did not exist beforethat is enough, that is the Englishman's justification in India.

- Lord George Nathaniel Curzon (of Kedleston)
  Farewell speech on departing from Bombay as Viceroy of India.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

- RalphWaldo Emerson
Essays: First Series,'Circles'.

It is an axiom of sports that the legs go first. For sportswriters, it's the enthusiasm.

-Trent Frayne
  The Tales of an  Athletic Supporter.

We were as nearly bored as enthusiasm would permit.

- Sir Edmund Gosse
Of a playby AlgernonSwinburne. Quotedin C Hassall Biography of Edward Marsh.

If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you'll be fired with enthusiasm.

-Vince(ntThomas) Lombardi
Attributed.

It is this tendency to play with manic enthusiasm on every possible occasion that distinguishes the amateur jazz musician from the professional, often to the public detriment of the latter, who are regarded as snootyand unfriendly.

- Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton
  Why No Beethoven?, ch.1.

Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.

- Henry Valentine Miller
  The Air-Conditioned Nightmare,'With Edgar Var e' se in the Gobi Desert'.

Whatever may have been my enthusiasm or impatience to be up and doing on the night before, the hour for getting up always finds me with no other ambition in the world than to be permitted to lie where I am and sleep, sleep, sleep.Not soTilman.Ihave never met anyonewith such a complete disregard for the sublime comforts of the early morning bed. However monstrously early we might decide, thenight before, toget up, hewas about at least half an hour before the time. He was generally very good about it, and used to sit placidly smoking his pipe over the fire.

- Eric Earle Shipton
  On climbing with H W (Bill) Tilman. Nanda Devi.

Science isthegreat antidoteto the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

- Adam Smith
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.5, ch.1, pt.3, article 3.

Quand une fois on a tourne   l'enthousiasme en ridicule, on a tout de  fait, excepte   l'argent et le pouvoir. Once we have made enthusiasm ridiculous, there is nothing left but money and power.

- Germaine Necker, Baronne de Stae«  l
  Corinne ou de l'Italie.

We may say 'God Save the Queen', because nothing will save the Governor-General† Maintain your rage and your enthusiasm for the election now to be held and until polling day.

- (Edward) Gough Whitlam
  On the Governor-General SirJohn Kerr's action in dissolving theAustralian Parliament,11 Nov.Whitlam lost the subsequent election.

You can't climb up to the second floor without a ladder. When you set your aim too high and don't fulfil it, then your enthusiasm turns to bitterness. Try for a goal that's reasonable, and then gradually raise it. That's the only way to get to the top.

- Emil Zatopek
Quoted in ColinJarmanThe Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).