Fervour Quotes & Sayings

A lady once expressed herself in society - the very words show that they were uttered with fervour and under the pressure of a great many secret emotions: "Yes, a woman must be pretty if she is to please the men. A man is much better off. As long as he has five straight limbs, he needs no more!" — Sigmund Freud

Demagogues are so easy to identify. They gesture a lot and speak with pulpit rhythms, using words that ring of religious fervour and god-fearing sincerity. Sincerity with nothing behind it takes so much practice. The practice can always be detected. Repetition. Great attempts to keep your attention on words. — Frank Herbert

Religion reminds me of a lace condom. While lovingly crafted, it's not designed for pleasure; unless inflated with fervour, it collapses; one size does not fit all; and no matter how many times you dunk it in holy water, it will not prevent misconceptions or contagion. — Lowestoft Thellow

Dead towns are the Cathedrals of Silence. They, too, have their gargoyles, singular figures, exaggerated, dubious, set in high profile. They stand out from the mass of grey, which takes all it has in the way of character, its twitchings of stagnant life from them. Some have been distorted by solitude, others grimace with a directionless fervour; here there are masks of cherished lust, there faces ceaselessly sculpted and furrowed by mysticism. Human gargoyles, the only figures of interest in this monotonous population. — Georges Rodenbach

As a result, one can observe in many agents of evangelization, even though they pray, a heightened individualism, a crisis of identity and a cooling of fervour. These are three evils which fuel one another. — Pope Francis

I remember that, although I was full of fervour, I didn't have the slightest inkling, even at forty, of the deeper side to the movement we were pursuing by instinct. It was in the air! — Camille Pissarro

A thunder-storm! - the eloquence of heaven, When every cloud is from its slumber riven, Who hath not paused beneath its hollow groan, And felt Omnipotence around him thrown? With what a gloom the ush'ring scene appears! The leaves all shiv'ring with instinctive fears, The waters curling with a fellow dread, A veiling fervour round creation spread, And, last, the heavy rain's reluctant shower, With big drops patt'ring on the tree and bower, While wizard shapes the bowing sky deform, - All mark the coming of the thunder-storm! — Robert Montgomery

No, that's not the style of these people,' explained Maxy. 'You shouldn't think of these Bolsheviks as modern politicians. They were religious fanatics. Their Marxism was fanatical; their fervour was semi-Islamic; and they saw themselves as members of a secret military-religious order like the medieval Crusaders or the Knights Templar. They were ruthless, amoral and paranoid. They believed that millions would have to die to create their perfect world. Family, love and friendship were nothing compared to the holy grail. People died of gossip at Stalin's court. For a man like Satinov, secrecy was everything. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

If an instrument similar to a geiger-counter could be invented that counted moral judgements instead, we would learn to duck as people became increasingly 'moral', since lethal force is usually imminent. So far from moral fervour being an alternative to force, it is frequently the overture, the accompaniment and the memorial to it. — Charles Hampden-Turner

Even so, Vigny would say those in uniform have made the greater sacrifice by losing the man in the soldier - what he calls the warrior's abnegation, his renunciation of thought and action. Vigny says a soldier's crown is a crown of thorns, amongst its spikes none more painful than passive obedience.' 'True enough.' 'He sees the role of authority as essentially artificial, the army a way of life in which there is as little room for uncontrolled fervour as for sullen indifference. The impetuous volunteer has as much to learn as the unwilling conscript. — Anthony Powell

Maintain a prayerful frame of heart in the intervals of duty. What reason can be assigned why our hearts are so dull, so careless, so wandering, when we hear or pray, but that there have been long intermissions in our communion with God? If that divine unction, that spiritual fervour, and those holy impressions, which we obtain from God while engaged in the performance of one duty, were preserved to enliven and engage us in the performance of another, they would be of incalculable service to keep our hearts serious and devout. For this purpose, frequent ejaculations between stated and solemn duties are of most excellent use: they not only preserve the mind in a composed and pious frame, but they connect one stated duty, as it were, with another, and keep the attention of the soul alive to all its interests and obligations. — John Flavel

All religions accept that there is something called 'criminality.' And criminality cannot be excused by religious fervour. — Wole Soyinka

I turned and moved fast, focusing swiftly on a wave I had selected for no reason. There was whiteness and grenyess in it and a sort of blue and green. It was a line. It did not toss, nor did it stay still. It was all movement, all spillage, but it was pure containment as well, utterly focused just as I was watching it. It had an elemental hold; it was something coming towards us as though to save us but it did nothing instead, it withdrew in a shurgging irony, as if to suggest that this is what the world is, and our time in it, all lifted possibility, all complexity and rushing fervour, to end in nothing on a small strand, and go back out to rejoin the empty family from whom we had set out alone with such a burst of brave unknowing energy. — Colm Toibin

It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, it has set up that single, unconscionable freedom
free trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. — Karl Marx

Run run run Hermione. You have in your hands a message and a token ... run and run and run and run Hermione. You know running and running and running that the messenger will take (lampadephoros) your message in its fervour and you will sink down exhausted ... run,run, Hermione. For the message-bearer next in line has turned against you ... dead, dead or forgotten. Hecate at crossroads, a destruction ... — H.D.

After lunch Poirot begged me to accompany him home. I consented rather stiffly.
"You are annoyed, is it not so?" he asked anxiously, as we walked through the park.
"Not at all," I said coldly.
"That is well. That lifts a great load from my mind."
This was not quite what I had intended. I had hoped that he would have observed the stiffness of my manner. Still, the fervour of his words went towards the appeasing of my just displeasure. I thawed. — Agatha Christie

Happy the man who gains sagacity in youth, but thrice happy he who retains the fervour of youth in age. — Dagobert D. Runes

The pair were, in truth, but the ashes of their former fires. To the hot sorrow of the previous night had succeeded heaviness; it seemed as if nothing could kindle either of them to fervour of sensation any more. — Thomas Hardy

Such was the quasi-religious fervour surrounding the concept of the nation that politicians were ready to use identifications of the ancient spread of 'peoples' as evidence for claims about the present. — Peter Heather

Capablanca used to talk calmly and moderately about everything. However, when our conversation turned to the problems of the battle for the world championship, in front of me was a quite different person: an enraged lion, although with the fervour typical only of a southerner, with his temperamental patter, which made it hard to follow the torrent of his indignant exclamations and words. — Alexander Koblencs

I think that, in almost all human beings, there is buried a profound tribal instinct that makes us very susceptible to being aroused to patriotic fervour. — Adam Hochschild

The staying awake was a great self-sacrificaing gesture of friendship, and wonderfully in keeping with our current mood of intense friendship and religious fervour. We were all in a state of shock. We engaged in a long Dostojevskyan conversations and drank one black coffee after another. It was sort of night typical of youth, the sort you only can look back on with shame and embarassment once you've grown up. But God knows, I must have grown up already by then, because I don't feel the slightest embarassment when I think back to it, just a terrible nostalgia. — Antal Szerb

They who pray with faith have fervour and fervour is the fire of prayer. This mysterious fire has the power of consuming all our faults and imperfections, and of giving to our actions, vitality, beauty and merit. — Frances Xavier Cabrini

ofttimes so greatly is he comforted by the desire for tribulation and adversity, through love of conformity to the Cross of Christ, that he would not be without sorrow and tribulation; for he believeth that he shall be the more acceptable to God, the more and the heavier burdens he is able to bear for His sake. This is not the virtue of man, but the grace of Christ which hath such power and energy in the weak flesh, that what it naturally hateth and fleeth from, this it draweth to and loveth through fervour of spirit. — Thomas A Kempis

See my finger wet, see my finger dry, see my finger cut my throat if I tell a lie," said the girl, in a singsong tone, and with accompanying dramatic gestures of fearful histrionic fervour. — Carolyn Wells

So he went on stringing together these and other absurdities, all in the style of those his books had taught him, imitating their language as well as he could; and all the while he rode so slowly and the sun mounted so rapidly and with such fervour that it was enough to melt his brains if he had any. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I still recall the excitement & patriotic fervour in Kargil when Tiger Hill was won. — Narendra Modi

Men ablaze are invincible. Hell trembles when men kindle. The stronghold of Satan is proof against everything but fire. The Church is powerless without the flame of the Holy Ghost. Destitute of fire, nothing else really counts; possessed of fire, nothing else really matters. The one vital need is fire. Without the flame and fervour of the Holy Ghost the Church will never accomplish its mission. — Samuel Chadwick

What is Gujarat? You and I are Gujarat, friends! If we read, Gujarat will read. Let us all read. Where there are 5.5 crore Gujaratis, that is my Gujarat and where each Gujarati reads, that is my Vanche Gujarat. Let us move forward with this fervour. — Narendra Modi

Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour. — Alfred North Whitehead

Have you not often met poor old women who are most faithful to the pious recitation of the Rosary? You also must do all that you can to recite it with fervour. Get right down, at the feet of Jesus: it is a good thing to make oneself small in the presence of so great a God. — Columba Marmion

We are all advertising, all of the time. If you want to sell your car, what do you do? You clean and polish it and make it the best you can. Some people bake bread when they are trying to sell their house because the smell adds a friendly feeling. Even the priest, with all his or her fervour, is advertising God. Everybody is selling. — Paul Arden

I stared at him. At this too-thin, too-sincere boy. This person.
Because I knew what he meant. I understood exactly. And I'd felt it too, that interior certainty. But over the years, I'd let all the fervour fade. I'd stopped believing in it, somehow. I'd let it become something I did, not something I was. — Alexis Hall

The Creationists, like all bigots, derive their fervour from rejection
the more they can reject, the more righteous they themselves feel. — John Berger

Hence the greatest crimes have been found, in many instances, compatible with a superstitious piety and devotion; Hence, it is justly regarded as unsafe to draw any certain inference in favor of a man's morals, from the fervour or strictness of his religious exercises, even though he himself believe them sincere. Nay, it has been observed, that enormities of the blackest dye have been rather apt to produce superstitious terrors, and increase the religious passion. Bomilcar, having formed a conspiracy for assassinating at once the whole senate of Carthage, and invading the liberties of his country, lost the opportunity, from a continual regard to omens and prophecies.7 Those who undertake the most criminal and most dangerous enterprises are commonly the most superstitious; as an ancient historian remarks on this occasion. Their devotion and spiritual faith rise with their fears. — Christopher Hitchens

The miracle of Bach has not appeared in any other art. To strip human nature until its divine attributes are made clear, to inform ordinary activities with spiritual fervour, to give wings of eternity to that which is most ephemeral; to make divine things human and human things divine; such is Bach, the greatest and purest moment in music of all time. — Pablo Casals

Story of Pakistan' development makes an interesting reading-how a country with lot of baggage of underdevelopment and sets of contradictions and constraints, keeps on stumbling from phase to phase, adopting with religious fervour the mainstream globally accepted development ideas, policies and strategies, which are current at that time. From exclusive emphasis on growth and trickle down of 1960s, she took a U-turn and tried to redistribute the fruits of growth in 1970s.Failing miserably in this endeavour which resulted in an expanded state capitalism; she started denationalizing everything in the following decades and adopted the new mantra of liberalization. She is now struggling to remove poverty in the midst of glaring extravagance of certain classes to avoid bursting at the seams of society. — Shahid Hussain Raja

And the second as an old man might say it about the weather; not without sincerity but certainly without fervour. — G.K. Chesterton

I should like,' said the child, 'to leave my dear love to poor Oliver Twist; and to let him know how often I have sat by myself and cried to think of his wandering about in the dark nights with nobody to help him. And I should like to tell him,' said the child pressing his small hands together, and speaking with great fervour, 'that I was glad to die when I was very young; for, perhaps, if I had lived to be a man, and had grown old, my little sister who is in Heaven, might forget me, or be unlike me; and it would be so much happier if we were both children there together. — Charles Dickens

This is crazier and louder than I was prepared for. With every week, the fervour and anticipation seem to grow. People know my name and ambush me in public and try to figure out what hotel I'm staying at and ask me to bite them and want to touch my hair. — Robert Pattinson

There was something terrible, but also something sad and melancholy in this long cry uttered by the Russian infantry as they staged an attack. As it crossed the cold water, it lost its fervour. Instead of valour or gallantry, you could hear the sadness of a soul parting with everything that it loved, calling on its nearest and dearest to wake up, to lift their head from their pillows and hear for the last time the voice of a father, a husband, a son or a brother ... — Vasily Grossman

said Mr. Toots, whose fervour of acquiescence was greatly heightened by his entire ignorance of the Captain's meaning. — Charles Dickens

Passion. It can be used to describe the beauty of an earth-shaking meeting between two people, but it isn't just that. It's there in the excitement of the unexpected, in the desire to do something with real fervour, in the certainty that one is going to realise a dream. Passion sends us signals that guide us through our lives. — Paulo Coelho

I brought killer intensity to my workouts ... It's not enough to just show up and do the workout. You have to bring something to it ... What was your intention? If you are not believing with all fervour and relentlessness in what it is you want to do, no one is going to do that for you. — Lynn Jennings

A sure way of retaining the grace of heaven is to disregard outward appearances, and diligently to cultivate such things as foster amendment of life and fervour of soul, rather than to cultivate those qualities that seem most popular. — Thomas A Kempis

He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been, in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away, by the fervour of this reproach. — Charles Dickens

Let us be banded together as one man; let us contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints; let us pray with fervour, let us live in holiness, let us preach constantly, and preach with fire, and let us so live, that we may impress our age, and leave our footprints on the sands of time. — Charles Spurgeon

There was no energy of a narrative in my family, not even the fervour of an elegy. — Anne Michaels

Yes, my life is a life of combat; I can say that this has never stopped for a single instant. It is a combat that started for me at the age of 16. I'm 90 years old now, and my motivation hasn't changed; it's the same fervour that drives me. — Ahmed Ben Bella

There is a name for that pebble: passion. It can be used
to describe the beauty of an earth-shaking meeting between two people, but it isn't just that.
It's there in the excitement of the unexpected, in the desire to do something with real
fervour, in the certainty that one is going to realise a dream. Passion sends us signals that
guide us through our lives, and it's up to me to interpret those signs.
I would like to believe that I'm in love. With
someone I don't know and who didn't figure in my plans at
all. All these months of self-control, of denying love, have had exactly the opposite result: I
have let myself be swept away by the first person to treat me a little differently. — Paulo Coelho

She wanted Adam Fox with the fervour of
parched earth thirsting for water, corn aching for the warmth of ripening sun, a starving skeleton drooling over a crust of bread. Her passionate young body yearned to feel his touch, soft lips quivered an invitation to be kissed, wounded eyes promised a lifetime of devotion, if only ... — Margaret Rome

The unwritten rules of behaviour are infinite in number, finely shaded, and subtle to the last fraction of a degree. They are not to be broken. If broken, the rules of forgiveness leading to re-establishment are equally of air and iron. I learn these rules with rather less ease than my contemporaries because, in the back streets of my being, a duel is developing and increasing in fervour between my instinct which knows why something is so, and my hen-pecking intelligence which wishes to analyse why something is so. — Hal Porter

The Bolsheviks were atheists but they were hardly secular politicians in the conventional sense: they stooped to kill from the smugness of the highest moral eminence. Bolshevism may not have been a religion, but it was close enough. Stalin told Beria the Bolsheviks were "a sort of military-religious order." When Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka, died, Stalin called him "a devout knight of the proletariat." Stalin's "order of sword-bearers" resembled the Knights Templars, or even the theocracy of the Iranian Ayatollahs, more than any traditional secular movement. They would die and kill for their faith in the inevitable progress towards human betterment, making sacrifices of their own families, with a fervour seen only in the religious slaughters and martyrdoms of the Middle Ages - and the Middle East. They — Simon Sebag Montefiore

I think I shall like you again, and yet again: and I will make you confess I do not only like, but love you
with truth, fervour, constancy. — Charlotte Bronte

At least I have the flowers of myself,
and my thoughts, no god
can take that;
I have the fervour of myself for a presence
and my own spirit for light;
and my spirit with its loss
knows this;
though small against the black,
small against the formless rocks,
hell must break before I am lost;
before I am lost,
hell must open like a red rose
for the dead to pass. — H.D.

She had nothing to lose when she looked into those dark limpid pools of desire...Apart from her soul, and even that she would relinquish for one night undulating on his rigid fervour. But to what end? A moment of exquisite bliss? No, she demanded an encore; even her soul had a price... — Virginia Alison