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Infatuation   /ɪnfˌætʃuˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Infatuation

noun
1.
A foolish and usually extravagant passion or love or admiration.
2.
Temporary love of an adolescent.  Synonyms: calf love, crush, puppy love.
3.
An object of extravagant short-lived passion.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Infatuation" Quotes from Famous Books



... haughty belle who persisted in the face of all opposition in marrying Charles Stuart, who staggered through the whole three acts with a big, green catsup bottle in each pocket. Rosie Carrick and Teenie Johnstone did their best to dissuade the mistaken one from her strange infatuation, even setting the good example of choosing Willie Carrick and Johnny Johnstone, exemplary young men, as their sweethearts, but all in vain. The haughty belle would listen to no one, and at the end of act three, now a weeping drudge, she trailed off the stage, with the maudlin ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... sent for Estenega and told him of what I had seen. In the first place I had to tell some one, and in the second I thought to end his infatuation and avert further trouble. "You firebrand!" I exclaimed, in conclusion. "You see the mischief you have worked! You will go, now, thank heaven—and ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... delight. I almost killed her five or six times. She tried to pierce my eyes with that hairpin that you saw just now. Look, do you see that little white spot beneath my left eye? We loved each other. How can I explain that infatuation? You would not ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... she do?" he thought resentfully, feeling as if he had been offered a willow switch with which to fight off a grizzly. It seemed to him that he might as sensibly go to Evadna herself for assistance, and that, even his infatuation was obliged to admit, would be idiotic. Peppajee, he told himself when he reached his horse, ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... Woman he loves turn into Excellencies and Advantages. I do assure you, I am very much afraid of venturing upon you. I now like you in spite of my Reason, and think it an ill Circumstance to owe ones Happiness to nothing but Infatuation. I can see you ogle all the young Fellows who look at you, and observe your Eye wander after new Conquests every Moment you are in a publick Place; and yet there is such a Beauty in all your Looks and Gestures, that I cannot but admire you in the very Act of endeavouring ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... he seemed to be completely absorbed by gayety. Sometimes going to as many as fourteen assemblies, balls, etc., in one evening. "He acknowledged to me," says Dallas, "that it amused him." Did not his genius suffer then from the new infatuation? So courted, flattered, and surrounded by temptations, did not this worldly life prove too seductive, hurtful to his mind, heart, and independence of character? Did he draw from the world's votaries his rules of judgment, his ways of ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... upon gain, have hitherto smothered those blazing illuminati, George Stephens and his syn—Syncretcis; have hindered their literary effulgence from breaking through the mists hung before the eyes of the public, by a weak, infatuated adherence to paltry Nature, and a silly infatuation in favour ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... elbow several times as they walked, and the young woman at last understood that this was meant as a hint to her to take the trumpet-major's arm, which its owner was rather suggesting than offering to her. Anne wondered what infatuation was possessing her mother, declined to take the arm, and contrived to get in front with the miller, who mostly kept in the van to guide the others' footsteps. The trumpet-major was left with Mrs. Garland, and Anne's encouraging pursuit of ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... kingdom," said Judge Bernard. "What a strange infatuation to look for the end of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... after summing up all the sorrow and care and toil, and waste of life and fortune which that concern has cost his brother, himself, and all of us, he exclaimed, "Oh, if I had but L10,000, I could set it all right again, even now!" My mother and I actually stared at this infatuation. If I had twenty, or a hundred thousand pounds, not one farthing would I give to the redeeming of that fatal millstone, which cannot be raised, but will infallibly drag everything tied to it down to the level ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... bones to dwell on his lack of height and his foxy complexion, I am rather sorry now that I did it, because I have ceased to think that these objectionable details deserved to be made of any consequence. On the contrary, I own to the infatuation of beginning to see that there is something fine in them. I suppose I shall be calling Tom Robinson's hair golden, or tawny, or chestnut soon, and his inches the proper height for a man. It is true," broke off Annie, with sudden, unaccountable perversity, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... that he reached the haven of his own room feeling thoroughly out of tune with the whole affair. Yet—there it was. And no man could lightly break with a girl of that quality. Besides, his feeling for her—infatuation apart—had received a distinct stimulus from their talk about his mother and the impression made on her by the photograph he had brought with him, as promised. And if Mrs Elton was a Brobdingnagian thorn on the stem of his Rose, the D.C.'s patent pleasure and affectionate allusions ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... shame and remorse, the unhappy man slunk back to his hermitage, miserable and degraded, bitterly lamenting his folly and infatuation, but resolved to atone for it by deep repentance ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... different and irreconcilable planes of life, there had never been a moment since he had first seen her when he would not, save for his dragging on the steady curb of reason, have fallen into a headlong infatuation. Now he wished only to prove himself a ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... was all Tina could get out of him. She noticed, too, what her blind infatuation had prevented her observing before, that there was a fierce expression in his eyes when he set out on these nocturnal rambles, and that on his return the corners of his mouth and his long finger-nails were always smeared with blood. Furthermore, she noticed that although ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... that they had any basis of truth. It was inevitable that the early Christians should eagerly attack so ambiguous a figure, and Tatian (Oratio ad Graecos, cap. 52) reproached the Greeks that they honored statues of the tribade Sappho, a prostitute who had celebrated her own wantonness and infatuation. The result is that in modern times there have been some who placed Sappho's character in a very bad light and others who have gone to the opposite extreme in an attempt at "rehabilitation." Thus, W. Mure, in his History of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... in their infatuation for gambling,—a Chinaman, after all his possessions have been staked and lost, sometimes selling himself for a term of years, to keep up the game; or an Indian gambling away a hand, an arm, a leg, and so on, and at last the head, until ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... whose features were known to millions, not even withdrawing himself from the public gaze at the stations for changing horses—all this is calculated to perplex and sadden the pitying reader with the idea that some supernatural infatuation had bewildered the predestined victims. Meantime an earlier escape than this to Varennes had been planned, viz., to Brussels. The preparations for this, which have been narrated by Madame de Campan, were conducted with a disregard of concealment even more astounding to people of ordinary good sense. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... the bushy black hair of the dean, without seeing on one side and the other the two pale, meek-eyed, devoted women, who watch his every look, shrink from his sudden bursts of wrath, receive for their infatuation a few fair words without sentiment, and earnestly crave a little love as a return for their whole hearts. It is a wonderful, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... half a dozen people all watching you, saying to themselves or to each other, 'Poor thing! she hasn't got over her infatuation yet. Isn't it pretty to see how naturally her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... for him in vain. Yet this man I captivated, I fixed; and far from being content, as other beauties had been, with the honor of possessing his heart, I brought him to make me his wife, and gained an honorable title to his tenderest affection.—The infatuation of Paris reflected little honor upon you. A thoughtless youth, gay, tender, and impressible, struck with your beauty, in violation of all the most sacred laws of hospitality carries you off, and obstinately refuses to restore you to your husband. You seduced Paris from his duty, I recovered ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... not, go through all the miserable details of the difficulties in which I was entangled, of the humiliating excuses I had to make, and the more humiliating threats and reproaches I had to endure. It is enough to say that, with desperate infatuation, I made a solemn promise to my creditors to satisfy them all on the first day of the ensuing month, and on the fulfilment of that promise it depended, whether my character as a gentleman was still preserved or irretrievably ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... produced no immediate change in the situation of affairs at Streatham. Dr. Johnson's visits were as frequent and as protracted as before; Fanny continued to be numbered among the dearest friends of the widow. Not yet had arisen that infatuation which eventually alienated from Mrs. Thrale the sympathy of her former friends, and subjected her, justly or unjustly, to such severe and general condemnation. But to this topic we shall revert ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... Lord's help, I will overcome this infatuation!" he repeated, as he paused in his hasty walk, bowed his head, and folded his hands in prayer to God for deliverance from the power of ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... story entitled "Elspeth Pynevor,"—a story of such remarkable vigor and promise, and planned on such noble and powerful lines as to deepen regret that its author's death left it but half finished. A single sentence has been added by another hand to round the episode of Willan Blaycke's infatuation ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson

... of the sixty ships threw the odds of battle heavily against the rest of Antony's fleet. And matters were made worse by its leader suddenly allowing his infatuation for the Queen of Egypt to sweep away all sense of his duty to his comrades and followers and his honour as a commander. As he saw Cleopatra's sails curving round his line and making for the open sea, he hastily ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... but unsolvable? What is it that compels Germany and France to tax themselves until they fairly stagger under the burden of military expenditures? Naught other than a suicidal lust for military power. Naught other than the infatuation of the dizzy, competitive war dance of mutual destruction—each nation blindly driven by ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... newspaper, throws it down, and says, "God help me! I don't know." Then another pause; and now the ticking of the little clock is fairly riotous. "Florence, love," kneeling by her, "bear with me. It's a fascination, an infatuation—an intellectual disloyalty to you, if you will—but it is nothing more, and it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... Marston bite his lips and I saw Mollie's face aflame with fury and her eyes darting lightning—no longer at Marston now, but at the Blight. The mountain girl held nothing against the city girl because of the Wild Dog's infatuation, but that her own lover, no matter what the Hon. Sam said, should give his homage also to the Blight, in her own presence, was too much. Mollie looked around no more. Again the ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.

... and promises, and yet could hardly prevail upon him to tolerate the tedium of his company even from motives of interest. The hour of payment arrives, and now he is the servant of another master; instead of love and infatuation, wisdom and temperance are his bosom's lords; but the beloved has not discovered the change which has taken place in him, when he asks for a return and recalls to his recollection former sayings and ...
— Phaedrus • Plato

... first time it occurred to me to reflect on the strange conduct of the springboks; for, instead of making off at my appearance, they only bounded a little to one side, and then kept on their course. They seemed possessed by a species of infatuation. I remembered hearing that such was their way when upon one of their migrations, or 'trek-bokens.' This, then, thought I, must ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... self-sacrificing, so generous—oh! how could she help loving him? Not with the love that had once been Reginald Stanford's, whose only basis was a fanciful girl's liking for a handsome face, but a love far deeper and truer and stronger. She looked back now at the first infatuation, and wondered at herself. The scales had fallen from her eyes, and she saw her sister's husband in his true light—false, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... suffered none in body, and violate not the laws of all-powerful Nature by forbidden embraces. Suppose he were to be compliant, the action itself forbids {thee; but} he is virtuous, and regardful of what is right. And {yet}, O that there were a like infatuation ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... whilst I was engaged in important business, and told me that Christ was coming. . . . And now you have made your appearance, and almost persuaded me to embroil myself yet more with the priesthood, as if they did not abhor me enough already. What a strange infatuation is this which drives you over lands and waters with Bibles in your hands. My good sir, it is not Bibles we want, but rather guns and gunpowder, to put the rebels down with, and above all, money, that we may pay the troops; ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... and the city of London during the late session of parliament, may have prov'd so embarrassing to A—-n as to have caus'd a suspension of the execution of it for a while; but to trust that it is therefore wholly laid aside, is a degree of credulity and infatuation, which I hope will never be impos'd by any man on this country. Great pains we know are taken to perswade and assure us, that as long as we continue quiet, nothing will be done to our prejudice: But let us beware of these soothing arts. - Has anything ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... hand the sword, and in the left the crosier. The compartments are full of political allegories. An expression of Lord Clarendon's in the preface to his "Survey of the Leviathan," shows our philosopher's infatuation to this "idol of the Den," as Lord Bacon might have called the intellectual illusion of the philosopher. Hobbes, when at Paris, showed a proof-sheet or two of his work to Clarendon, who, he soon discovered, could not approve of the hardy tenets. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... back at with amazement is the situation I accepted. I had undertaken, with my companion, to see it out, and I was under a charm, apparently, that could smooth away the extent and the far and difficult connections of such an effort. I was lifted aloft on a great wave of infatuation and pity. I found it simple, in my ignorance, my confusion, and perhaps my conceit, to assume that I could deal with a boy whose education for the world was all on the point of beginning. I am unable even to remember at this day what proposal I framed for the end of his ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James

... argued, together with the interest aroused by her unusual personality, which drew him to Kate—a passing fancy, a curious, inexplicable infatuation; but, he assured himself stoutly, not at all the foundation upon which to build for permanency. Yet as he rode towards the mountains with his eyes fixed upon the low pass to which Teeters had directed him, he experienced the first real thrill ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... the heart of man; yet, didst not thou witness me, thy preceptor, debased by intemperance? Thus, Jacob, were the affections implanted in us as a source of sweetest happiness, such as those which now yearn in my breast towards thee; yet hast thou seen me, thy preceptor, by yielding to the infatuation and imbecility of threescore years, dote, in my folly, upon a maiden, and turn the sweet affections into a source of misery and anguish." I answered not, for the words of the Dominie made a strong impression upon me, and I was weighing them in my mind. "Jacob," ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... troubled, yet we derive the greatest consolation from this, that he did not go to such lengths by your advice or by that of his princes. Wherefore, we feel assured, that by your advice it will be easy to recover him from the infatuation of his mind. For which reason, Brethren, since it is plain that in this matter not only our, but your cause, and that of the entire Church is at stake, we exhort you in the Lord to oppose yourselves as a wall before the house of God, and to spare no pains in reclaiming as soon ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby

... murderous guise, my arm lifted to destroy the idol of my soul and the darling child of my patroness? In what words should I unfold the tale of Wiatte, and enumerate the motives that terminated in the present scene? What penalty had not my infatuation and cruelty deserved? What could I less than turn the dagger's point against ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... the best and greatest of Caesars, showed himself at all these pageants more crazed than ever; he hardly ever spoke now to the people. 'Twas averred that Caesonia, his wife, had given him a potion to cure him of his infatuation for Dea Flavia, his kinswoman, whom he had exalted above all the other Augustas, and whose absence from Rome and from all festivities had rendered him half distracted ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... said for the twins that they were not social climbers. In their instant infatuation for this novel device they quite lost the thrill that should have been theirs from the higher aspects of the encounter. They were not impressed at meeting a Whipple on terms of seeming equality. They had eyes and desire ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... become exacting, the nation hostile. The instrument of the intrigues of the court on the heart of the king, she had at first favoured and then opposed all reforms which prevented or delayed the crises that arose. Her policy was but infatuation; her system but the perpetual abandonment of herself to every partisan who promised her the king's safety. The Comte D'Artois, a youthful prince, chivalrous in etiquette, had much influence with her. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... slender, struggling ray of consolation Sustains me, very feeble though it be: There are two who still escape infatuation, My friend M'Foozle's ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray

... work, procrastination, and self-indulgence destroyed her power of concentration. She could not think long enough on one subject to think it out straight, therefore she was constantly deceived in her friends and interests. She first trusted everybody, then mistrusted everybody. Infatuation with every new acquaintance was quickly followed by suspicion. For years she was a very sick woman, a victim ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... planting a vegetable-garden, in a mood of unreckoning exaltation such as rarely comes to a woman of her nature, and never comes to her but once. She had felt no such blissful security when Blake and she were first engaged. Blake was weak. She had felt it intensely even when her infatuation for him was too fresh to permit her to reason, and a weak man while unmarried is peculiarly liable to changes of affection. But, on the other hand, a weak man once safely married is completely in the power of his wife; during the ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... marvellous facility, but often with an infatuation, or even fatuity, equally marvellous. Specious and audacious generalization is, however, a vice of thinking more attractive to most than any virtue,—above all, if it flatter their wishes and opinions. There are few ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... very good; whether it is possible by ANY means, we will say by ANY means, to open the eyes of our valued relative to his present infatuation. Whether it is possible to make him acquainted by any means with the real character and purpose of that young female whose strange, whose very strange position, in reference to himself'—here Mr Pecksniff sunk his voice ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... without quailing, and there was nothing but aversion in the glance he gave him back. The scales had fallen from his eyes, and his infatuation was dissipated. Never again was he to listen greedily to Saurin's words, and think them wiser than any others. Never more would he admire and applaud him; build castles in the air, forming wild projects for the future, in his company, or associate ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... particular pointed patience of which, had he lived, he would have given more striking and, it is to be hoped, more fruitful examples. He at least was, in Vereker's words, a little demon of subtlety. We had begun by disputing, but I soon saw that without my stirring a finger his infatuation would have its bad hours. He would bound off on false scents as I had done—he would clap his hands over new lights and see them blown out by the wind of the turned page. He was like nothing, I told ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... him, he had never thought of Eileen—he could not bring himself to think of her so materially or sentimentally. For, although he now understood that he had never known what love, might be—its coarser mask, infatuation, he had learned to see through; and, as that is all he had ever known concerning love, the very hint of it had astonished and repelled him, as though the mere suggestion had been a rudeness offered to this delicate and delicious ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... men in England who persist in shutting their eyes to the certain consequences of the Russian advance towards the northern frontier of Afghanistan; but the time will come when England will have to rue, bitterly, the infatuation and folly of her rulers. When that day arrives, she will have to make such an effort, to hold her own, as she has never had to do since the days when she stood, ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty

... twenty-three years old. I shall call before you a woman from whom you will learn the events that led up to this act. You will hear from her own lips the tragic circumstances of her life, the still more tragic infatuation with which she has inspired the prisoner. This woman, gentlemen, has been leading a miserable existence with a husband who habitually ill-uses her, from whom she actually goes in terror of her life. I am not, of course, saying that it's either right or desirable for a young man to fall in love ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... remember that the Witchcraft Delusion obsessed our ancestors. It is not impossible, therefore, that between 194 and 1918 the American people passed through a stage in which it threw logic to the winds. This would account at least for its infatuation for President Wilson, in spite of his undisguised inconsistencies and appalling blunders. A people who thought logic ally and kept certain principles steadily before it, could hardly otherwise have tolerated Mr. Wilson's "too-proud-to-fight" speech, and his message to Germany after the sinking ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... Harry made a clean breast of it, and told Philip all he knew about the Selby affair, and Laura's treatment of him, sometimes encouraging him—and then throwing him off, and finally his belief that she would go, to the bad if something was not done to arouse her from her infatuation. He wished Philip was in Washington. He knew Laura, and she had a great respect for his character, his opinions, his judgment. Perhaps he, as an uninterested person whom she would have some confidence, and as one of the public, could say some thing to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Mellen, was a pupil in the school. Her love for Miss Fuller was perfect infatuation. The brother worshiped her—sweet creature, who could help it?—and so the acquaintance began in the parlor of a boarding ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... or holy man, so enamoured of a lovely person that he had neither fortitude to bear with, nor resolution to declare, his passion: and, however much he was the object of remark and censure, he would not forego this infatuation, and was saying:—"I quit not my hold on the skirt of thy garment, though thou may'st verily smite me with a sharp sword. Besides thee I have neither asylum nor defence; if I am to flee, I must ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... the almost chaotic excitement caused in Charmian by the music, and by her secret infatuation, concrete knowledge seemed to detach itself and to arise. As, when she had looked at the island in the Algerian Garden, she had felt "I shall be here some day with him!" so now she seemed to be aware that ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... by the duration of the trance into which Plank had fallen, watched the progress of that bulky young man's infatuation as he sat there on the pool's marble edge, exchanging trivial views on trivial ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... to-morrow, and then forever, because the wine-cup has thrown the system into a state of lassitude, neutralizing the energies so essential to success in business. Verily, "wine is a mocker." The use of intoxicating drinks as a beverage is as much an infatuation as is the smoking of opium by the Chinese, and the former is quite as destructive to the success of the business man as the latter. It is an unmitigated evil, utterly indefensible in the light of philosophy, religion or good sense. It is ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... every aspect of the case that did not touch upon her relations with her lover, was shaken by the scornful disgust with which the broken sentences were poured forth; and, if her infatuation for Mark was too complete to allow her to consider any action of his unjustifiable, still she realized, perhaps for the first time, the feelings with which other people would view the thing that ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... is amusingly illustrated by an anecdote of Goethe, recorded by himself in his autobiography. Some physiognomist, or phrenologist, had found out, in Goethe's structure of head, the sure promise of a great orator. "Strange infatuation of nature!" observes Goethe, on this assurance, "to endow me so richly and liberally for that particular destination which only the institutions of my country render impossible. Music for the deaf! Eloquence without an audience!"] That of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... Theatre in Dresden; his temperate participation in the popular movement of 1848 and consequent loss of the Dresden position; the death of his wife, Amalia, in the same-year after an estrangement of seven years, due to his own infatuation for Therese von Bacharacht; his happy marriage in 1849 with Bertha Meidinger, a cousin of his first wife; the publication in 1850-51 of his first great novel of contemporary German life, entitled, Spiritual Knighthood; his continuous editorial work ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... when her father was disturbed, but he had given her a lead. Kit was a fool, and although she doubted if he were as dull as he pretended, she was angry with him. Anyhow, it might be possible to stop his ridiculous infatuation for Miss Osborn. ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... he was absent? Indeed he may be fairly called a moralist. Carefully reared in the Roman Catholic religion he died confessing that faith. With the exception of the Sand episode, his life was not an irregular one, He abhorred the vulgar and tried to conceal this infatuation from his parents. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... know it!" he replied. "You will make some man happier than ever man was before." His infatuation did not blind him to the fact that she cared nothing about him, looked on him in the most unpersonal way. But that knowledge seemed only to inflame him the more, to lash him on to the folly of an ill-timed ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... Columbus had no superior; as a colonist and governor he proved himself a failure. Had he been less pretentious and grasping, his latter days would have been more peaceful. Discovery was his infatuation; but he lacked practical judgment, and he brought upon himself a series ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... the first time it occurred to me to reflect on the strange conduct of the springboks; for, instead of making off at my appearance, they only bounded a little to one side, and then kept on their course. They seemed possessed by some species of infatuation. I remembered hearing that such was their way when upon one of their migrations, or "trek-bokens." This, then, thought I, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... infatuation; you shall return home with me; have no fear of my presence; in a week after you accept the shelter of my father's roof, again ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... the Bishop to an unprecedented degree. A bachelor, he rejoiced in the commanding period of life that stretches between the time of waning impulse and the time of incipient dotage, when a woman can reach the male heart neither by awakening a young man's passion nor an old man's infatuation. He must be made to admire, or he can be made to do nothing. Unintentionally that is how Viviette operated on ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... The Regent's rash infatuation for a system, as novel as it was seductive, had borne its fruits. The judgment which his mother had pronounced upon Philip of Orleans was justified to the last. "The fairies," said Madame, "were all invited to the birth of my son; and each endowed ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... laws, and a man to whose courage, virtue, and every eminent qualification even envy itself could make no objection, and thereby rendered their country the seat of war and theatre of the most terrible devastations of all kinds. But of this infatuation of the Poles I shall have occasion hereafter to speak more at large, and should not now have made any mention of it, had not the presence of that hero, whom they first rejected, rendered it the general subject of discourse at Venice. Numberless were the instances ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... come about? What scheme of hell led to this? What combination of men and fiends accomplished this tragedy? It was love—affection, infatuation, for that which ought not to have been loved, "King Solomon loved many strange women, besides the daughter of Pharaoh," as the margin puts it. And this leads me to ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... went back to the camp with Ajeet, suffused to silence by the strange thing that had happened, the strange infatuation—for it was that—that had so suddenly filled her heart for the handsome sahib whose soft, brave eyes had looked through hers ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... satisfaction which was not to be found in a footman was absent as well from the imposing figure of Perry Bridewell himself. Yet she told herself that she would have married him had he possessed merely the historical penny, and the restless infatuation of those first months was still sufficiently alive to lend the colour of its ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... am not worth it," she said. "But so much the better, if every one gains more than I lose by my ... infatuation." ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... the broker, in what would appear, in the present aspect of affairs, to be an outside speculation. During the ride to the mountains he mentally compared Miss Wildmere's behavior with that of Madge a week before. Witnessing Graydon's evident infatuation, he would have been glad to recognize any manifestation of traits that promised well for his future; but the young lady was evidently altogether occupied with the attentions she received, her own beauty, and the furtive admiration of fellow-passengers. Poor ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... Horseless Age for three months, and as for Nelly—anybody with a four-cylinder tonneau could have torn her from her happy home. Not that she didn't love Harry tremendously. She was crazy about him—but crazier for a bubble. It's an infatuation like any other, only worse, and I guess I was no better than Nelly myself, for I used to ride regularly with Lewis Wentz and you know what Lewis Wentz is. And he only had a wheezy old steam carriage anyway, and sometimes blue flames would leap ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne

... not able to sleep that night. For a couple of months a struggle had gone on in her heart between society life, into which her sister was dragging her, and her infatuation for Mahin, combined with a desire to reform him. This second desire now became the stronger. She had already heard about poor Maria Semenovna. But, after that kind woman had been murdered in such a ghastly way, and after Mahin, ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... can now believe it, my Lord! (Bishop) we come to this earth Ready damned, with the seeds of evil sown quite so thick at our birth, sings Edwin Arnold.[FN326] We ask, can infatuation or hypocrisy—for it must be the one or the other—go farther? But the Adamical myth is opposed to all our modern studies. The deeper we dig into the Earth's "crust," the lower are the specimens of human remains which occur; and hitherto ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... preserve what has been given to its keeping. I know no abuses of precious inheritance half so grievous, as the abuse of all that is best in art wherever the Romanist priesthood gets possession of it. It amounts to absolute infatuation. The noblest pieces of mediaeval sculpture in North Italy, the two griffins at the central (west) door of the cathedral of Verona, were daily permitted to be brought into service, when I was there in the autumn of 1849, by a washerwoman living in the Piazza, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... this scene with a kind of infatuation. At its close he placed his hands to his ears, and rushed towards the highway. Still the cries for mercy rang through his brain, and it was many weeks before his memory ceased to dwell on the horrid event. ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... War, either, did you?" says Alex. "I suppose you don't believe that, eh? I told you I was gonna put this feller over and if you'll leave me be, I will! I told you every man had an ace buried somewhere, didn't I? Well, Hector's ace is his mad infatuation for his stomach. He's never played it yet, because there's been no reason to do so. As long as he had the money, he could buy the stuff and hash it up in any way his peculiar tastes desired. Once he thinks he can't do that, he'll put all he's got under his hat into findin' a way to ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer

... get on with his courtship, and that was a fact. The fair Leah was very sweet, very coy, greatly amused, I fancy, at her aunt's obvious infatuation for me, and not a little flattered at the handsome M. Rochez's attentions to herself. But there it all ended. And whenever I questioned Rochez on the subject, he flew into a temper and consigned all middle-aged Jewesses to perdition, and all the lovely and young ones to ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... who never saw Higgs, and knew nothing about him except the too little that I told him, pressed his suit, and about a month after Higgs had gone, having recovered my passing infatuation for him, I took kindly to the Mayor and accepted him, without telling him what I ought to have told him—but the words stuck in my throat. I had not been engaged to him many days before I found that there was something ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... passion in her was the flower of Hermes to Red Jim, keeping him from complete infatuation when she sang to him, playing her own lightly-touched accompaniment at the piano. He had never been entertained like this before. And when a girl sang a love ballad and at the same time looked at him with eyes at once serious and laughing, he had to set his teeth and shake himself to keep ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... we drove to the camp, and brought Frank home to dinner. Now and then he stayed with us till the next day, and even Laura could not wonder at his "infatuation," as she had once called it, when she saw how thoroughly Josephine forgot herself in her utter devotion to him; over this, Laura's eyes filled with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... were extreme. He was angry with the opposition, with the ministers, with all England. The nation seemed to him to be under a judicial infatuation, blind to dangers which his sagacity perceived to be real, near and formidable, and morbidly apprehensive of dangers which his conscience told him were no dangers at all. The perverse islanders were ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... she tried to banish the unworthy image of Harold Phipps, but his melancholy eyes still exercised their old potent charm, and the memory of his low, insistent tones still echoed in her ears. She came to the tragic conclusion that she was the victim of a hopeless infatuation that would ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... little stationery shop without having seen where he had been going, his eyes blinded with rage, his mind filled with bitter imprecations. Of his night's infatuation not a vestige remained except the weakness of disillusionment and the ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... mingled emotion subsided in a flood of tears. She mourned over the shameful infatuation of Eudora, and she acutely felt the degradation attached to her own accidental share in the scene. With these thoughts was mingled deep pity for the pure-minded and excellent Philaemon. She was sure that it was his voice she had ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... jarring memory of the half-mocking way in which she had pushed back upon himself the frank revelation he had made. But though it jarred, it had no power to lessen the fascination she exercised over him. Despite her rebuff, despite the seeming hopelessness of his infatuation, it held him. The more he tried to force it back, the stronger it grew; the greater, the more beautiful and more lovable did Mrs. ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott

... could have been seriously threatened by such incoherent ravings. Their exertions were effectual, for exorcism was a powerful remedy in the fourteenth century; or it might perhaps be that this wild infatuation terminated in consequence of the exhaustion which naturally ensued from it; at all events, in the course of ten or eleven months the St. John's dancers were no longer to be found in any of the cities of Belgium. The evil, however, was too ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... with the ever-recurring phrase, "It is for the jury to say"; and, at the end, the jury, thoroughly convinced, said, "Not guilty." The Kennistons were vindicated; and the public, which had been almost unanimous in declaring them fit tenants for the State prison, soon blamed the infatuation which had made them the accomplices of a villain in hunting down two unoffending citizens, and of denouncing every lawyer who should undertake their ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... ought to endeavour to dissuade her, but the reflection that her visits must almost of necessity involve my companionship, enfeebled my will. I was fast approaching a state of infatuation. ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... their personal safety to the British fleet; though not only their dominions and their rank, but the liberty and even the lives of Ferdinand and his family, were interwoven with our success; yet with an infatuation scarcely credible, the most affecting representations of the distress of the besiegers, and of the utter insecurity of Sicily if the French remained possessors of Malta, were treated with neglect; and the urgent remonstrances ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... beforehand with him. Floyd does not like the business any better, and Eugene is quite indifferent to it. There is not the slightest prospect of his being able to take the head of the management, and he was certain of that a year ago. He has not been blind to the young man's infatuation for Madame Lepelletier, and he secretly hopes now that it will be transferred to Mrs. Grandon. Certainly such dissipations are much less expensive than fast horses and champagne suppers. As for himself, he sees that he must go as circumstances dictate. He will make some money, but he can never ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... her pen as she sat in the little library that opened from the big, cheery hall. Her thoughts were with all that had betided in the past and what might have been. She canvassed anew, as often heretofore, her strange infatuation, like a veritable aberration, so soon she had ceased to love her husband, to make the signal and significant discovery that he was naught to love. She had always had a sort of enthusiasm for the truth in the abstract—not so much as a moral endowment, but a supreme fixity, the one immutable ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... for the development of poet, novelist, and actress, why have they always had lovers—Sappho, George Eliot, George Sand, Rachel, Sara? Mrs Kendal nurses children all day and strives to play Rosalind at night. What infatuation, what ridiculous endeavour! To realise the beautiful woodland passion and the idea of the transformation, a woman must have sinned, for only through sin may we learn the charm of innocence. To play Rosalind a woman must have had more than one lover, and if ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... for I had good reason to know that at that time the king had alienated many by his infatuation for Madame de Verneuil; while I had to reckon with all whom my pursuit of his interests injured in reality or appearance. Forthwith I directed that the prisoners should be led in to the chamber adjoining my private closet, and taking the precaution ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... it would seem, by the idea of contagion. Vannozza alone remained, and never left her bed-side. Some there were who came to visit, but not for the purpose of consoling her; on the contrary, it was to reproach the dying saint with what they called her absurd infatuation, which had introduced the plague into her abode, and endangered her own life, for the sake of a set of worthless wretches. She listened with her accustomed gentleness, without attempting to defend herself from the charge. Her soul was perfectly at peace; she could joyfully ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... St. Amand had long since in bitterness repented of a transient infatuation, had long since distinguished the true Florimel from the false, and felt that, in Julie, Lucille's wrongs were avenged. But in the hurry and heat of war he plunged that regret—the keenest of all—which embodies ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... he had no belief in minds that listen, wait, and receive. He had no conception of the subtle and indirect motions of imagination and feeling. His influence on me was great, and opposed to the natural unfolding of my character, which was fervent, of strong grasp, and disposed to infatuation, and self-forgetfulness. He made the common prose world so present to me, that my natural bias was controlled. I did not go mad, as many would do, at being continually roused from my dreams. I had too much strength to be crushed,—and since I must put on the fetters, could not submit to let them ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... pursuing this infatuation longer. The time has come when you must learn to command yourself. ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... which unseated the boldest rider and bravest champion—a pretty device of the elder brother's, in which one hardly knows whether to be most charmed with the poetic fancy or the protecting affection which it displayed. The delightful infatuation lasted for several years, undergoing some gradual modifications. Until he was nine, Alfred had been chiefly taught at home by a tutor, but at that age he was sent to school, where the first term dispelled his belief in the marvellous. His brother was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... of his orations, said: "The track of God's lightning is a straight line from justice to iniquity," and one might have said to Phillips, in his later years, that there is in the affairs of men a straight line from infatuation to destruction. In what degree Fourier was responsible for the effusion of blood in Paris in the spring of 1871 it is not possible to determine; but the relation of Rousseau to the first French revolution is not more certain. Fate is the spoken word which cannot ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... wrong, preferred by his enemies,—traits that have inexpressibly endeared their possessor to every officer and soldier in his late army. Said an officer, but just returned from New Orleans, to me a few days since,—"I have heard of the infatuation of the Army of the Potomac to its earlier leader, but I do not believe their devotion is near so deep and earnest as that of the faithful men who followed General Butler from New England and the Northwest, through the campaign of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... and flourishing families in England. Pity and matter of grief is it to think that families, by estate able to appear in such a glorious posture as this, should ever be vulnerable by so mean a disaster as that of stock-jobbing. But the general infatuation of the day is a plea for it, so that men are not now blamed on that account. South Sea was a general possession, and if my Lord Castlemain was wounded by that arrow shot in the dark it was a misfortune. But it is so much a happiness that it was ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe

... hurt Albinia's feelings by remarks, but in private compensating by little outbreaks with her husband, teasing him about his hopeful goddaughter, laughing at Albinia's infatuation, and railing at Mr. Kendal's endurance of the ill-humour, which she declared ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... young, neither much older than Lanyard, both were very much alive, openly betraying an infatuation with existence very like his own, and both were lovely enough to excuse the exquisite insolence of their ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... with his quick intuition, was uncannily aware of the girl's infatuation; and it was Barry who, through his very knowledge of her ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... Maddie,' says Starlight, 'James is in that particular stage of infatuation when a man only sees one woman in the whole world. I envy him, I assure you. When your day comes you will understand much of what puzzles you ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... door of that infernal pit of laughter, we shall hear no laugh against his faithful little Mathilde. It is not at Mathilde he laughs, but at the precious little blue-stocking, who freshened the last months of his life with a final infatuation—that still unidentified "Camille Selden" whom he playfully called ...
— Old Love Stories Retold • Richard Le Gallienne

... very wholesome and regenerating change which a man undergoes when he "comes to himself." It is not only after periods of recklessness or infatuation, when has played the spendthrift or the fool, that a man comes to comes to himself. He comes to himself after experiences of which he alone may be aware: when he has left off being wholly preoccupied with his own powers and interests and with every petty plan that ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson

... bad points and bringing out in relief their good qualities. They care neither for the abuse of others, nor for their duties to their ancestors, nor for the wretched future in store for themselves. Carried away by their infatuation for their children, and intoxicated upon intoxication, the hearts of parents are to be pitied for their pitifulness. It is not only the two parents in my story who are in this plight; the hearts of all parents of children all over the world are the same. ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... story of idolatry. It seems an absurdity, an insanity; it is one—both. But think it out. Is it quite impossible, quite incredible? Let me sketch the outline of so strange infatuation. Our prior was once a good man—an easy, kind, and amiable: he takes the cowl in early youth, partly because he is the younger son of an unfighting family, and must, partly because he is melancholy, and will. And wherefore melancholy? ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... from Fanny that Zoe and she had discussed the incident and Vizard's infatuation, Fanny being specially wroth at Vizard's abuse of pearls; but she told him she had advised Zoe not to mention that lady's name, but let ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... The infatuation of Mark Antony for Cleopatra enabled Antigonus to hold his kingdom for three years (40-37 B.C.E.). Then Herod, who had escaped to Rome, returned to Syria to conquer the kingdom that Antony had bestowed on him. He brought with him the ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... magnanimity put K. in a curious position—left him, as it were, with a divided allegiance. Sidney's frank infatuation for the young surgeon was growing. He was quick to see it. And where before he might have felt justified in going to the length of warning her, now ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... A degree of infatuation prevails there which you could hardly conceive possible. The account comes from a very respectable and rational quarter. The most respectable characters are most violently persecuted, and the persons arraigned ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... there were signs of a movement that was in revolt against its despotism. The great wind from the East began to drop, and veered to the North. Scandinavian and Russian influences were making themselves felt. An exaggerated infatuation for Grieg, though limited to a small number of people, was an indication of the change in public taste. In 1890, Cesar Franck died in Paris. Belgian by birth and temperament, and French in feeling and by musical education, he had remained outside the Wagnerian ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... plenty, would plant the unwary Rochester on the hearth of his own and Overbury's enemies. With Rochester in the Howard camp there would be short shrift for Thomas Overbury. There would be, though Rochester in his infatuation seemed blind to the fact, as short a shrift as the Howards could contrive ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... explain to German composers that, though we do not require them to compose in Italian, they ought, at least, to learn to write in German in a manner suited for singing? otherwise, in their amazing ignorance and infatuation, they will wear out the powers of opera singers, and torture the public, apparently without a suspicion that it is possible to write both grand and light operas with true, characteristic German thoroughness. ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... of time the infatuation of the Wittelsbach Lovelace became so marked that it could not be ignored in places beyond Munich. The Countess Bernstorff grew seriously perturbed. "There has long been talk," she confided to a friend, "as ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... Mr. Dickson's sentiments then of the revolution settlement, so much now gloried in and boasted of by many, they must be either ignorantly blind or under an infatuation, who see not that things are a great deal worse (though the same as to the constitution) than in his day. For how many are the clogs and impositions, that are annually (I may say daily) wreathed about the neck of the church, in these degenerate isles of sea, Britain and Ireland. ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... have the consolations of a full treasury, to atone for the oppression of that valuable class of the citizens who are employed in the cultivation of the soil. But public and private distress will keep pace with each other in gloomy concert; and unite in deploring the infatuation of those counsels which led to disunion. PUBLIUS. 1 If my memory be right they amount ...
— The Federalist Papers

... Schoolmarm had rebuffed him, as Susie had prophesied, but the effect of it upon him was such as neither he nor she had reckoned. As they rode along a swift, overpowering infatuation for Dora Marshall grew upon him. He felt something like a flame rising within him, burning him, bewildering him with its intensity. She seemed all at once to possess every attribute of the angels, from mere prettiness her face took on a radiant beauty ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... reached a danger-point, for Lee was on the verge of saying something about Ben's infatuation; but she didn't, and Alice knew why she didn't, for she asked, rather abruptly: "Won't you come over Thursday night? I'm going to take the Haneys to dinner at the hotel." She flushed under Lee's gaze. "It's really Bennie's ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... commended to the industrious, energetic merchant, in preference to superficial, so- called, 'professional men.' But Eugene had rare educational advantages, and I expected him to improve them, and be something more than ordinary. He expected it, five years ago. What infatuation possesses him ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... unsuccessful than Satan; blind politics, rank infatuation, madness detestable, the concomitants of arbitrary power! They can never think to succeed; but should they conquer, they'll find that he who overcometh by force and blood, hath overcome but half his foe. Capt. Preston's massacre is ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock

... a billet as engineer officer, to call on Stuyvesant and to cheer him up and contribute to his convalescence, and did so after the manner of men, by talking on all manner of topics for nearly an hour and winding up by a dissertation on Billy Ray's pretty daughter and "Wally" Foster's infatuation. Farquhar said it was the general belief that Maidie liked Wally mighty well and would marry him were he only in the army. And Stuyvesant wondered how it was, in all the years he had known Farquhar ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... Charlotte she had not a doubt. She had never had a doubt of any woman's attitude of readiness to grasp the sceptre, if it were only held out by her son. And she herself was conscious of something which was almost infatuation for the girl. Something about her appealed to her. She had an almost fierce impulse of protection, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... rectory pillows for a night or so, and, on such occasions all the Plumsteadians had been loud in praise of her condescension. Now it happened that when this second and more aggravated blast of the evil wind reached the rectory,—the renewed waft of the tidings as to Major Grantly's infatuation regarding Miss Grace Crawley, which, on its renewal, seemed to bring with it something of confirmation,—it chanced, I say, that at that moment Griselda, Marchioness of Hartletop, was gracing the paternal mansion. It need hardly be said that the father was not slow to invoke such a ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... Montefiore's infatuation went so far as to suggest to him the idea of marrying her. He accordingly asked her history, and Perez very willingly told him the circumstances under which she had become his ward. The prudent Spaniard was led to make this confidence because he had ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac

... similar circumstances. Circumstances altogether similar are not likely to recur in two centuries; but circumstances only in part similar, a commander-in-chief incapacitated by illness, or a second-in-command blind with infatuation, might easily recur in critical or dreadful emergencies. Such circumstances did happen in the Nepaul campaigns; imbecility in more leaders than one, as abject as that at Cabool. And though it could not lead to the same awful results where there had not been the same elaborate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... know, was a well developed, good-looking, intelligent man of forty. The woman was well developed, good-looking, and as smart as a steel-trap, and both being English I was not at all surprised at their mutual admiration and infatuation, nor did I blame them much. I was entrusted with many closely-sealed envelopes which I carried from one to the other. With my feeble assistance they tried to devise some method by which they might escape from the city before the Apostle ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... and often yielded to the temptation to rush up to Fenn with some foolish question that made the sad-eyed man stare and wonder. But just to be that near to her for the moment pleased him. There was no jealousy for Fenn in Van Dorn's heart; there was only a dog-like infatuation that had swept him away from his reason and seated a fatuous, chattering, impotent, lecherous ape where his intellect should have been. And he knew he was a fool. He knew that he was stark mad. Yet what ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... new experience, this, to see the girl he loved surrounded by the admiration and attention of other men. In his own infatuation he had not realized that most men would be affected by her as he was, would experience the same maddening impulses—the same longing—the same thirst for possession of her. Now the fact came home to him with the force of an electric shock. He could not endure the ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... the soul of General Abercromby's army seemed to expire. From the unhappy moment that the general was deprived of his advice, neither order nor discipline was observed, and a strange kind of infatuation usurped the ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... heart of Serafina, brought over Antonia herself to the interests of his passion, and at once detached them both from their duty and religion. Heaven and earth! how dangerous, how irresistible is the power of infatuation! While I remained in the midst of this blind security, waiting for the nuptials of my daughter, and indulging myself with the vain prospect of her approaching felicity, Antonia found means to protract ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... of favor brightening, And changing color at each look of thine. The charm is over, and, with it, the yoke Lies broken, scattered on the ground; and I Rejoice. 'Tis true my days are laden with Ennui; yet after such long servitude, And such infatuation, I am glad My judgment, freedom to resume. For though A life bereft of love's illusions sweet, Is like a starless night, in winter's midst, Yet some revenge, some comfort can I find For my hard fate, that here upon the grass, Outstretched in indolence I lie, and gaze Upon ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... one redeeming feature in this infatuation of Van Twiller's which the sober moralist will love to look upon—the serene unconsciousness of the person who caused it. She went through her role with admirable aplomb, drew her salary, it may be assumed, punctually, and appears from first to last to have been ignorant that there was ...
— Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... together make up or dominate humanity: 1. Sattwa, 'excellence' or 'goodness' (quiescence), whence proceed truth, knowledge, purity, etc. 2. Rajas, 'passion' (activity), which produces lust, pride, falsehood, etc., and is the cause of pain. 3. Tamas, 'darkness' (inertia), whence proceed ignorance, infatuation, ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... subsequent remonstrances. In that case, our government would have been conciliated; and the monster's son, who yet lives in Malabar, would now be reigning in his stead. But Diis aliter visum est—earth was weary of this Kandyan nuisance, and the infatuation, which precipitated its doom, took the following shape. In 1814, certain traders, ten in number, not British but Cinghalese, and therefore British subjects, entitled to British protection, were wantonly molested in their peaceable occupations by this Kandyan ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... despised it just as he despised his own work as a painter. He had grown really fond of Van Buren for the simple, sincere qualities in which Harry knew himself to be deficient; and the American's whole-hearted admiration—almost infatuation—for him gave Harry the pleasure one feels in the frank devotion of a child. It touched him, even while he intended to make use of it, because it was his nature to make use of everything. It is an infallible sign of the second-rate in nature and intellect ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... Harness, who was behind the scenes, remonstrated against the filial infatuation which sacrificed health, sleep, peace of mind, to gratify every passing whim of the Doctor's. At a time when she was sitting up at night and slaving, hour after hour, to earn the necessary means of living, Dr. Mitford must needs have ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... the affair. I felt that in her mind she regarded the elopement as subject for common gossip; also, that she was not free from a form of generalised jealousy. She did not want Arthur Banks for herself, but she evidently thought him a rather admirable masculine figure and deplored his "infatuation" for Brenda. Moreover, I had a notion that I had fallen from Miss Tattersall's favour. There was something in her expression when she discovered my deceit in pretending ignorance of the heroic chauffeur that portrayed a sense of personal ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... anything further. Afterward, at court receptions and fetes, and, sometimes, in the palace galleries, when she was off duty, I contrived to meet her. She neither gave me opportunities nor avoided me. All the progress that I made was in the measure of my infatuation for her. When I begged for a meeting at which we might not be surrounded by half the court, she smiled, and found some reason to prevent any such interview in the near future. So, if I had carried things very far at our first meeting in the Louvre, I now paid for my ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens

... prescription. When this is done, his duty is ended, and whether the patient obeys the prescription and lives, or neglects it and dies, the physician feels exonerated from all responsibility. He may, and in some cases does feel anxious concern, and may regret the infatuation by which, in some unhappy case, a valuable life may be hazarded or destroyed. But he feels no moral responsibility ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... did not satisfy my conscience. But he surprised me by saying that he was satisfied that if I had been in my room, and he had walked into the parlor with the license, she would have married him. What infatuation! He says, though, that I only prevented it; that my influence, by my mere presence, is stronger than his words. I don't say that is so; but if I helped ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... assured the Governor of South Carolina that Virginia is able to defend herself. What causes all this tumult and apprehension? SLAVERY! And yet, strange as it may seem, the Virginians, with a stupidity and infatuation which no language can describe, are seriously discussing the propriety of enslaving the free negroes of that State. Such a proceeding would resemble a physician who should order a dose of arsenic to cure a patient who had taken strychnine, ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin

... Temple, the friends agreed to meet at the office between four and five o'clock. Hector Merlin would doubtless be there. Lousteau was right. The infatuation of desire was upon Lucien; for the courtesan who loves knows how to grapple her lover to her by every weakness in his nature, fashioning herself with incredible flexibility to his every wish, encouraging the soft, effeminate habits which strengthen her hold. Lucien ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... vain however to reason against the general infatuation. The Tories exultingly predicted that the Bank of Robert Harley would completely eclipse the Bank of Charles Montague. The bill passed both Houses. On the twenty-seventh of April it received the royal assent; and the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... like a trooper, he thumped his glass down on the table and smashed it—a disgusting exhibition of temper—I was ashamed of him. Then he said never, as long as he lived and could prevent it; that he had heard something of my infatuation, so as I am not given that way he had made inquiries, and found the family was most unsatisfactory. Then he had come here yesterday on purpose to see you—darling," turning to me, "and that he had judged for himself. ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... talked absurdly, and fell asleep and snored horridly. Booh, the nasty pig! But as he lay there stretched on the pink satin sofa, Angelica still persisted in thinking him the most beautiful of human beings. No doubt the magic rose which Bulbo wore caused this infatuation on Angelica's part; but is she the first young woman who has thought ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray

... from Little Rock came to dine, and within a week Undine understood that Mabel's future was assured. If Van Degen had been at hand Undine would have smiled with him at poor Mabel's infatuation and her suitor's crudeness. But Van Degen was not there. He made no sign, he sent no excuse; he simply continued to absent himself; and it was Undine who, in due course, had to make way for Mrs. Lipscomb's caller, and sit upstairs with a novel while the drawing-room ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... father expostulated. I gazed with apathy on the one, and listened with cold indifference to the reasoning and arguments of the other; a choice of schools was offered to me, where I might be a parlour boarder, and I was to finish at the University, if I would but give up my fatal infatuation. Nothing, however, would do; the die was cast, and for the sea I ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... my profession.' One who has not passed through that mad, ardent, over-excited but generous epoch, cannot imagine to what a forgetfulness of material existence the intoxication, or, if you prefer, infatuation of art pushed the obscure and fragile victims who would rather have died than renounce their dream. One actually heard in the night the crack of solitary pistols. Judge of the effect produced in such an environment by M. Afred ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... at her service, and she had them for nothing; even ideas and fashionable intellectual movements served her pleasure, a diversion in her existence, and I was only the coachman who drove her from one infatuation to another. Now I was no longer necessary to her; she would fly away and I ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... serious person whom she had admired particularly for his seriousness. But she was in another mood now, another atmosphere—the atmosphere she had breathed since she was thirteen, except in the brief period when her infatuation for Scarborough had swept her away from ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... injured, cheated, reduced to a state of fibre, a state of pulp. His body, crushed by the nightmares of the night, enervated by the scene of the morning, needed entire rest, and if his soul had not still that infatuation which had broken it in tears at the monk's feet, it was sad and restless, and it also asked ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... the question one of the relative merits, as yet unknown, of Rodney and Hood. A commander-in-chief cannot devolve his own proper functions upon a subordinate, however able, without graver cause than can be shown in this instance. The infatuation which detained Rodney at a side issue can only be excused—not justified—by a temporary inability to see things in their true proportion, induced on more than one occasion by a temperamental defect,—the lack of the single eye to military ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... in a highly appropriate and unfeigned rapture which pleased the Duchess; for women are no more to be deceived by the comedies which men play than by their own. Mme. de Maufrigneuse calculated, not without dismay, that the young Count's infatuation was likely to hold good for six whole months of disinterested love. She looked so lovely in this dove's mood, quenching the light in her eyes by the golden fringe of their lashes, that when the Marquise d'Espard bade her friend good-night, ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Infatuation" :   love, passionateness, passion, infatuate, object



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