Life & Wisdom Quote by Minna Antrim

Enthusiasm gets sold as a virtue, but Minna Antrim treats it like a drug: a quick hit that can be confused for character. Her comparison to “stimulants” is doing double duty. It’s not just that fervor can be artificially induced; it’s that, like caffeine or stronger stuff, it can mask weakness while briefly simulating power. You feel lifted, certain, alive. Then the bill comes due.

The dagger is in “affected by.” Antrim isn’t describing enthusiasm as something sincere people feel; she’s describing it as a performance adopted for effect. That verb suggests pose, imitation, social contagion. Enthusiasm becomes a costume for those who lack “mental ballast” - the steadying weight of knowledge, patience, skepticism, and proportion. Ballast is what keeps a ship from tipping in rough water; without it, any wave looks like destiny. In Antrim’s world, the loudest zeal often belongs to the least equipped minds, because intensity is easier than understanding.

The line carries the sting of an early-20th-century salon sensibility: a writer watching public life (and private conversation) reward vigor over depth. It reads like a warning against fads, movements, charismatic speakers, even the cult of optimism. The subtext is elitist in a specific way: not class snobbery so much as a defense of restraint and discernment. Antrim’s point isn’t that enthusiasm is always bad; it’s that unmoored enthusiasm is a cheap engine for people who don’t have better tools.