"Quixotic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Your Quixotic madness has made you more than once speak to me of Quixotism as the new religion. And I tell you that this new religion you propose to me, if it hatched, would have two singular merits. One that its founder, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... The quixotic idea of inculcating manners by means of the press infected others besides the gangsman. In a Navy whose officers not only plumed themselves on representing the ne plus ultra of etiquette, but demanded that all who approached ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... City of London (Lord John Russell) tells us it is quite a mistake to suppose that he ever intended to go to war for Poland. In fact, he stated—what will be very disheartening to hon. Gentlemen below me—that he never supposed we were going to war for such a Quixotic object; that the case of Poland is one that is hopeless, and therefore it would be madness in England and France—not indiscretion—not a doubtful undertaking—but positive madness in England and France to take any part in promoting resistance ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... once, and it had kept her awake the whole night. After this, one could not be so disloyal as to solve it at once. For two hours or so, therefore, I merely toyed with it. Whenever I seemed to be getting warm I hurriedly thought of something else. This quixotic loyalty has been the undoing of me; my chances of a solution have slipped by, and I am beginning to fear that they will never return. While this is the case, the only word I can write about ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... yourself," Mr. Bomford demanded, impressively, "whether you have a right to treat your other self in this fashion? Your other self will assuredly resent it, if you retain your memory. Your other self would hate your present self for its short-sighted, quixotic folly. I tell you frankly that you have not the right to treat your coming self in this way. Consider! Wealth does not inevitably vulgarize. On the contrary, it takes you away from the necessity of associating with people calculated to depress and cramp your life. There are many ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said his Lordship, with his accustomed bluntness, "and your sea-captain has relieved your Quixotic conscience, what the deuce do ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... under those fetters of the free-born mind." When he was admitted into priest's orders, he thought the examination so short and superficial that he considered it "not necessary to conform to the Christian religion, in order either to be a deacon or priest." With these quixotic sentiments he came to town; and "after having, for some years, been a writer for the booksellers, he had an ambition to be so for ministers of state." The only reason he did not rise in the church, we are told, "was the envy of others, and a disrelish entertained of ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Quixotic as were his intentions, was performed with a far lighter heart than his setting forth. He would see Betty, and talk to her, come what ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... guardsman. He saw the dear face of the woman for whom he had chosen to cross that arbitrary will which would brook no disobedience, and sought to intimidate him with disinheritance. Through his mind passed in slurred detail the sordid story which had given him a brother's hate in return for a quixotic championing of the weak—a hate which proved to have power enough behind it to draw a devastating hand across the promise of ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... the passions, cherished a secret attachment, which continued, through all the most perilous stage of life, to act as a romantic charm in safeguard of virtue. This—(however he may have disguised the story by mixing it up with the Quixotic adventure of the damsel in the Green Mantle)—this was the early and innocent affection to which we owe the tenderest pages, not only of Redgauntlet, but of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and of Rokeby. In all of these ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... come, I suppose,' she said to herself. 'Mamma seems almost as impulsive and quixotic as Frances—quite bewitched by these people. But at worst there's nothing more to tell now, and Lady Myrtle appreciates my feelings ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... was struck dumb with amazement, not so much at the quixotic generosity of the proposal, as at the singular mind of the man in thinking that such a plan could be carried out. Herbert's best quality was no doubt his sturdy common sense, and that was shocked by a suggestion which presumed that all the legalities and ordinary bonds of life could be upset by ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... and had buried himself in that lofty sarcophagus in Gable Inn, resolved only to claim her, though she was all his own already, when he had reinstated his fortunes by his labour. That was noble also, perhaps, but in her own heart she thought it a trifle foolish—say Quixotic, not to be too severe. She would rather have seen his ardour find a more commonplace expression. She had a general sort of belief that whatever Philip did was bound to be right, and yet this actual experience ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... self- determination, except Mr. Lloyd George. There can be no doubt that, whatever regime may be introduced in Europe, African negroes will for a long time to come be governed and exploited by Europeans. If the European States became Socialistic, and refused, under a Quixotic impulse, to enrich themselves at the expense of the defenseless inhabitants of Africa, those inhabitants would not thereby gain; on the contrary, they would lose, for they would be handed over to the tender mercies of individual traders, operating ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... Sovereignty. Well, so much being disposed of, what is left? Why, he is contending for the right of the People, when they come to make a State Constitution, to make it for themselves, and precisely as best suits themselves. I say again, that is Quixotic. I defy contradiction when I declare that the Judge can find no one to oppose him on that proposition. I repeat, there is nobody opposing that proposition on principle. * * * Nobody is opposing, or ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... and liked though she could not approve of him. Powers of fascination in a man very often go together with lax principle, if not with active rascality; Kite was an instance to the contrary. He had a quixotic sensitiveness, a morbid instinct of honour. If it is true that virile force, preferably with a touch of the brutal, has a high place in the natural woman's heart, none the less does an ideal of male purity, of the masculine subdued ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... the garden path below them. The stiff, glazed, broad-brimmed black hat, surmounting a dark face of Quixotic gravity and romantic rectitude, indicated Don Juan Briones. His companion, lazy, specious, and red-faced, was Senor ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... all in her enthusiasm. "The people over at Danby are all crazy about him, I think," said Stephen. "He is a very good man no doubt, and does no end of things for the college boys, that none of the other professors do. But I think he is quixotic and sentimental; and all this stuff about those niggers at the Cedars is moonshine. They'd pick his very pocket, I daresay, any day; and he'd never suspect them. I know that lot too well. The Lord himself couldn't ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... for its help in advancing his political and imperial schemes. He employed it creditably and without ostentation, and spent none of it in social display in London. By his will he left the greater portion of it to the University of Oxford for the establishment of an amiable if somewhat quixotic system of bringing the various branches of the Anglo-Saxon race into association at a centre of learning and athletics, where they were to be leavened ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... scruples he had, but in our hearts I think we all honoured and loved him for them. For without forcing it in any way upon others he himself followed a code of honour that differed from, and was stricter than, that of the world around him. He was quixotic, especially in anything to do with money, and often to his own personal loss. I think we were all the better for having known him. He seemed hardly to think ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... master's house. Father Burke, who had begun politely enough, became obstreperous and abusive. Froude's life was in danger, and he was put under the special protection of the police. The English newspapers, except The Pall Mall Gazette, gave him no support, and The Times treated his enterprise as Quixotic. A preposterous rumour that he received payment from the British Ministry obtained circulation among respectable persons in New York. He had intended to visit the Western States, but the project was abandoned in consequence of growing Irish hostility which made him feel that further ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... she said, quietly. 'I only think you're too quixotic. You're sorry for me and you are letting a kind impulse carry you away, as you did last night at the casino. It's ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... good manners, and good morals. She said things that you and I couldn't say, and she did things. I felt the catastrophe in the air long before it came. But I couldn't warn Roger. I just had to let him find out. I wasn't there when the blow fell; but I'll tell you this, that Roger may have been a quixotic idiot in the eyes of the world, but if he failed it was because he was a dreamer, and an idealist, not a coward and a shirk." Her eyes were blazing. "Oh, if you could hear what some people said ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... already begun to be exerted on his life by a series of love-episodes. Some of these were of slight and ephemeral character; some were a source of unalloyed happiness, all the more so if there was an element of extravagance to appeal to his Quixotic nature. He always longed to give a dramatic and romantic character to his life, his wife says, and he spent some blissful days on an occasion when he ran away to Florence with a Russian princess as ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... inconsistent, and may be deemed Quixotic, when we remember that for his poems Burns was quite willing to accept all that Creech would offer. Yet one cannot but honour it. He felt that both Johnson and Thomson were enthusiasts, labouring ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... how much talk the incident aroused in the students' quarter, and that I was highly gratified to make the acquaintance of my famous countryman. It chanced I was to see more of the quixotic side of his character before the morning was done; for as we continued to stroll together, I found myself near the studio of a young Frenchman whose work I had promised to examine, and in the fashion of the quarter carried up Pinkerton along with me. Some of my comrades of this date were pretty obnoxious ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... no interest in missions, look on missionaries as good men engaged in a Quixotic enterprise, and know almost nothing about their work, but still they treat them with courtesy. There are, however, some of our own countrymen who take a deep interest in our work, visit our schools, occasionally attend our native services, and contribute liberally to our ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... he occupied an inconspicuous niche in one of the less fastidious Public Schools. He hated them for the qualities he despised and found so utterly inexplicable. He despised their lazy contempt for detail, their quixotic sense of fairness and justice in a losing game, their persistent refusal to be impressed by the seriousness of anything on earth. He despised their whole-hearted passion for sports at an age when he was beginning to be interested in less wholesome and ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... in your line who would not do certain things the doing of which has contributed to the making of your fortune, would by the ordinary dealer be regarded as Quixotic?" ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... to sail the next day there was a fine flurry in the harbour. Nothing of the kind had ever before happened there. Two ladies and a most respectable old gentleman sailing away under the skull and cross-bones! That was altogether new in the Caribbean Sea. To those who talked to him about his quixotic expedition, Captain Ichabod swore—and at times, as many men knew, he was a great hand at being in earnest—that if he carried not his passengers through their troubles and to a place of safety, the ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... fortune, who, in his residence at Twickenham, surrounded by friends of congenial tastes, enjoyed a life of literary ease. The Scribleriad is an attack on pseudo-science, the hero being a virtuoso of the most Quixotic kind, who travels far to discover rarities, loves a lady with the plica Polonica, waits three years at Naples to see the eruption of Vesuvius; and plays all kinds of fantastic tricks, as if in continual ridicule of The Philosophical Transactions, which are especially aimed at in the notes which ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the marriage, and scarcely an hour had passed, so long as he had hoped that Greif would live, in which he had not contrasted the happiness in store for his brother, if he took Hilda, with the misery he would have to encounter if he persisted in his quixotic determination. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... chances; only so can the great evils that ride mankind be banished. If there is a fighting chance of accomplishing a great good it is contemptible not to try; society must maintain a code that leads at times to quixotic acts. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... but a foolish, quixotic undertaking after all," he told himself, when his negotiations were completed, "but I must have some excuse for remaining here. That girl is the most beautiful being I ever met. She has power to move me as I was never moved before. ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... this or that side of the new movement, but the movement itself. Even at Oxford, where he resided as a fellow of Lincoln, he had been looked upon as head of the group of Methodists, and after his return from a quixotic mission to the Indians of Georgia he again took the lead of the little society, which had removed in the interval to London. In power as a preacher he stood next to Whitefield; as a hymn-writer he stood second to his brother Charles. ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... he was, wished to move on. Gaston lifted his hat to the girl and bade her good-bye. Then she saw that his motives had been wholly unselfish—even quixotic, as it appeared to her—silly, she would have called it, if silliness had not seemed unlikely in him. She had never met a man like him before. She ran her fingers through her golden- brown hair nervously, caught at a flying bit of old ribbon at her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... something in the practice of law to make amends for the ill fortune which, unwittingly and indirectly, I had been the means of bringing upon him. When I had made up my mind, I mooted the project to Captain Galsworthy, who laughed at it as quixotic, but confessed that he saw no better course open ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... he understood his business and suggested I should attend strictly to mine. I told him I understood mine and that it included some personal honor. I was hot. I suggested that wildcat development was not my business. He called me a quixotic young fool among other things, and I may have called him a robber. I'm not sure. Anyway, ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... quixotic to hope that here, in this little world of workaday people, he might be brought to see that personal acquisition and advance is not enough to give life meaning, to justify what it exacts. I was foolish. We are more apart ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... signature attached, relating to levies of men and great purchases of arms, which look as if he had plunged into some desperate enterprise, doubtless at her instigation; and in his sonnets there are frequent allusions to 'winning her by the sword,' 'loving her to the death,' and such Quixotic protestations, that look as if he had at one time meditated an unusually daring stroke. He was a fool," said Lady Scapegrace reflectively, "but he was a fine fellow, too, to throw wealth, life, and honour at the feet of a woman who was ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... to my quarters, feeling as if the whole of my military career had come to an end through my passionate, quixotic behaviour; and yet somehow I could not ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... shoulders. "I can't help what the servants say, Aunt Marion. I'm trying to be a friend to the girl, and help her to pull herself together. Of course I recognize the fact that Rash has been foolish—quixotic—or whatever you like to call it; but he ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... frightened the amusing little beggar, for I felt in that exceedingly light-hearted mood when one's merriment is ready to brim over at the slightest provocation. Yet that very morning poor Demetria's appeal had deeply stirred my heart, and I was now embarked on a most Quixotic and perhaps perilous adventure! Possibly the very fact of that adventure being before me had produced an exhilarating effect on my mind, and made it impossible for me to be sad, or even ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... a large place, lighted only by a single candle set upon the floor. The mountebank lay on his back upon a pallet; a large man with a Quixotic nose inflamed with drinking. Madame Tentaillon stooped over him, applying a hot water and mustard embrocation to his feet; and on a chair close by sat a little fellow of eleven or twelve, with his feet dangling. These three were the only occupants except the shadows. But the shadows were a company ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... views; but when a quarter of the human race assume to tell me what I must do, I may be too much disturbed by the circumstances to see so clearly the absurdity of their command. Therefore all public ends look vague and quixotic beside private ones. For any laws but those which men make for themselves, are laughable. If I put myself in the place of my child, and we stand in one thought and see that things are thus or thus, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... this account life be credited with too much gravity and import, or it seem to be assumed that life is all knight-errantry, let us turn to our less quixotic, and perhaps more effectual, man of affairs. He works for his daily bread, and for success in his vocation. He has selected his vocation for its promise of return in the form of wealth, comfort, fame, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... diplomatic personages on the C. R. B. list were partly for. Hoover had realized from the beginning what this would mean. "No," said the higher German officials, "it will not do to interfere too much with these quixotic Americans." ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... feeling rather drowsy, I composed myself to sleep. The last thing I remembered before closing my eyes was the long, swarthy, quixotic-looking face of my singular nurse, veiled in a blue cloud of cigarette-smoke, which, as it rolled from the nostrils of his big, aquiline nose, made those orifices look like the twin craters of ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... he replied. "By-the-bye, I have just seen him perform a quixotic but a very fine action," Francis said. "He stopped a carter from thrashing his horse; knocked him down, bought the horse from him and ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is not customary to suppose that devotion to the service of mankind is rational; it is taken to be gratuitous, if not quixotic. But once let it be granted that goodness accrues to action in proportion to its fruitfulness, it follows that that action is most blessed that is dedicated without reservation to the general life. There is only one course which can recommend itself ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... spirit thus engendered. It is only with a measure of habitual foolhardiness that you can be sure, in the common run of men, of courage on a reasonable occasion. An army or a fleet, if it is not led by quixotic fancies, will not be led far by terror of the Provost-Marshal. Even German warfare, in addition to maps and telegraphs, is not above employing the "Wacht am Rhein." Nor is it only in the profession of arms that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ourselves miserable about? We care for each other a great deal, much more than I had any idea of this morning. Why should we say good-bye? I don't believe it's at all necessary, after all. You have got some silly, quixotic idea into your head, I'm sure. Tell me what it is, and let ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... departing from him, as he thinks it must necessarily depart from all intelligent male Parisians, he wept. Since that moment, however, a gaiety, serene and imperturbable, has been the mainstay of his happily constituted character. The girl to whom his uncle desires to see him united—odd, quixotic, intelligent, with a sort of pathetic and delicate grace, and herself very religious—belongs to an old-fashioned, devout family,. resident at Varaville, near by. M. Feuillet, with half a dozen fine touches of his admirable pencil makes us see the place. ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... the sense indicated by you, and so popular now-a-days, that is, as an indispensable foundation of all legislative arrangements. For, if you take that point of view, the pure and sacred endeavor after truth would, to say the least, appear quixotic, and even criminal, if it ventured, in its feeling of justice, to denounce the authoritative creed as a usurper who had taken possession of the throne of truth and maintained his position ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... went on: "Olivier, as you know, was quixotic, and would not permit a secret service and spies. The thing, however, was done, like many other things, behind his back. It was managed by my old friend Espado; he was the bright-clad fop, whose hook nose got him called the Vulture. Posing as a sort of philanthropist ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... bird had brought him a holy message to deliver his fellowmen from bondage, he enlisted many blacks in his project for insurrection. But before the plot was ripe it was betrayed by a slave woman, and several negroes were arrested. Boxley thereupon marched with a dozen followers on a Quixotic errand of release, but on the road the blacks fell away, and he, after some time in hiding, surrendered himself. Six of the negroes after conviction were hanged and a like number transported; but Boxley himself broke jail ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... naturally most anxious that such a painful scene should not take place," said Miss Ravenscroft. "I beg of you, therefore, Cassie, to see her and use your influence to induce her, not from quixotic motives, to ruin herself and injure the other girls of ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... with radiant good-humor at my Quixotic schemes. Then he told me, that since he had been in the city he had given thousands to the charitable associations which spread in great lifegiving veins through ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... think it was? The most astounding, impossible, quixotic, unlanguageable thing in the world! He wants to send Katrine Dulany abroad to study. He wants it to be done in my name, however, so that it will in nowise compromise her, and wishes to have all the credit ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... hundred years of slow agony. But during that time I tried to comprehend that my friend of the bright, clear eyes, and open, fearless glance; the very soul and flower of honor; my ideal of almost Quixotic chivalrousness, stood with eyes that could not meet ours that hung upon him; face white, expression downcast, accused of a crime which came, if ever crime did, under the category "dirty," and ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... she to earn her daily bread if she obeyed the doctor's orders? Would it not be better to use her eyes to the end, and trust to charity to send her to an infirmary when she became blind? Why had she been foolish enough to refuse Mr. Ramsay's property? But for a quixotic theory, she would not now have ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... the momentary impulse that bade him hasten to the booking office and secure a ticket for St. Moritz forthwith. He dismissed the notion as quixotic and unnecessary. Bower's attitude in not pressing his company on Miss Wynton at this initial stage of the journey revealed a subtlety that demanded equal restraint on Spencer's part. Helen herself was so far from suspecting the truth that Bower would be compelled to keep up ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... against any one, more especially a person holding the rank of a gentleman, he might lay his account with being hunted out of society. But in the age of Charles, the ancient high and chivalrous sense of honour was esteemed Quixotic, and the civil war had left traces of ferocity in the manners and sentiments of the people. Rencounters, where the assailants took all advantages of number and weapons, were as frequent, and held as honourable, as regular duels. Some of these approached closely ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... The Dutch, equally quixotic, refrained from taking advantage of the enemy's inability to use his broadsides while thus approaching nearly head-on. Arrayed in a close column, the ships about six hundred feet apart, the crews at the guns, and the marines ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... and there was an end of it. He just knew. In view of the prospective failure of so many Archangels, it is not surprising that my lady herself, whatever she did, would not be able to erase this impression. Consequently though she had behaved to his face with a manner which it was a Quixotic courtesy to style "disdain," Anthony never wavered. For a second of time he had seen beyond the veil—at least, his heart had—and, now that he knew what it hid, all reinforcement of that veil was out of date. My lady might line it with oak, with brass, with ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... money which Richard Brithwood will not pay, and John Halifax will not go to law to make him. Nay, father dear, I am not going to quarrel with any one of your crotchets." She spoke with a fond pride, as she did always, even when arguing against the too Quixotic carrying out of the said crotchets. "Perhaps, as the reward of forbearance, the money will come some day when we least expect it; then John shall have his heart's desire, and start the ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... becomes ridiculous to himself. It is for other purpose that he wields the power; and when he is told what is his duty, and what should be his conduct, the preacher of such doctrine seems to him to be quixotic. "Where have you lived, my friend, for the last twenty years," he says in spirit, if not in word, "that you come out now with such stuff as old-fashioned as this?" And thus dishonesty begets dishonesty, till dishonesty seems to ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... right there, Maggie," said Mr. Wilton. "My poor lad, he certainly has done a noble, Quixotic sort of thing. I can't forgive myself for being so ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... already made up my mind to leave it at that. I have merely kept up the game to this point out of curiosity to see how far your—shall we say knight-errantry?—would lead you. I will now relieve you from the necessity of going through an act of Quixotic folly which would assuredly, sooner or later, have unpleasant consequences ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... Description of the Poet His Recitations Her renewed Visit A Pension from the King Proposed Journey to England The Westminster Review Angus B. Reach's Interview with Jasmin His Description of the Poet His Charitable Collections for the Poor Was he Quixotic? His Vivid Conversation His Array of Gifts The Dialect ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... enterprising a person as Mrs. Grote. When first I heard of this strange undertaking I was, in common with most of her friends, much surprised at it; nor was it until some years after the entire failure of this quixotic experiment, that I became aware that she had been actuated by any motive but the kindliest and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... quixotic, but it was magnificent. Soon the inward meaning of it leaked out, and the great heart of the public was touched. Crowds followed the cab, cheering it lustily; charming girls scaled it to get his autograph; interviews appeared ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... I never thought of appointments or of getting on in the world in a pecuniary sense. My friends often laughed at me, and when I think of it now, I confess I must have seemed very Quixotic to many of those who tried for this and that, got lucrative appointments, married rich wives, became judges and bishops, ambassadors and ministers, and could hardly understand what I was driving at with my Sanskrit manuscripts, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... these notions in a young man, sir. I had them myself at your age. I believe I had great ideas then, on the subject of temptation and the force of circumstances; and was as Quixotic as any one about reforming rogues. But my experience has convinced me that roguery is innate. Nothing but outward force can control it, and keep it within bounds. The terrors of the law must be that outward ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... walking back toward the cottage an idea and a conviction presented themselves, hand in hand. The conviction had been with him before—that he could not back out just then and leave those poor people to shift for themselves, as anxious as he was to be off about his own affairs; his undertaking was quixotic, but if he abandoned it at that juncture a queer story would chase him alongcoast, and he knew what sort of ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... invasion of Italy by the Orientals was simply ridiculous, and nothing but a product of the impotent imagination of despair. Through the prudent coolness of their leader the Romans were prevented from Quixotically pursuing their Quixotic antagonist and warding off in the distant Crimea an attack, which, if it were not nipped of itself in the bud, would still have been soon enough met at the foot ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... well-being is not to be secured by ample, independent possession of property; on the contrary, occasions might arise in which such possession might expose her to the more danger. She is ready prey to any man who knows how to play adroitly either on her affectionate ardor or her Quixotic enthusiasm; and a man stands by with that very intention in his mind—a man with no other principle than transient caprice, and who has a personal animosity towards me—I am sure of it—an animosity which is fed by the consciousness of his ingratitude, and which he has constantly vented ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... able-bodied man of her blood above ground to earn it for her. Nor could there be any disgrace so lasting, even to the third and fourth generation, as the stigma an outraged community would place upon the renegade who refused her aid and comfort. An unprogressive, quixotic life if you will—a life without growth and dominant personalities and lofty responsibilities and God-given rights—but oh! the sweet mothers that it gave us, and the wholesomeness, the cleanliness, the ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... voice of which he was capable of employing. "Has it come to pass that a verdant experimentalist like you, Fogg, could intimate to a veteran of my standing that I should take my chances of remuneration from the proceeds of such a quixotic scheme? Go to, Fogg! I love thee, but never more be officer of mine." Then laying aside his serio-comic manner and assuming one that more easily appertained to him, he continued: "Fogg, old pal, I told you that you could count on me to help you out, ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... tried to reconcile our asking for a band of horsemen with our professed trust in God's hand; and there would have been plenty of excuses very ready about using means as well as exercising faith, and not being called upon to abandon advantages, and not pushing a good principle to Quixotic lengths, and so on, and so on. But whatever truth there is in such considerations, at any rate we may well learn the lesson of this story—to be true to our professed principles; to beware of making our religion a matter ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thought you were satisfied about that. Look here; go ahead, pull whatever stunt is up your sleeve. I give you my word that if you see Leyden and feel as you do about him then, we'll hold back our own vessel until he's under weigh, no matter what we lose by it. Does that soothe your blessed Quixotic scruples?" ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... little matter, my dear Ormond, which I wish you to lay to heart very seriously. Now do take an old man's advice and do not get up upon your Quixotic hobby-horse the moment you sniff what it is—for I suppose you have guessed it already. Yes, it is what you feared: I want to urge you to follow your mother's ardent wish and add commission business to your other work. I know very well that young men must dream their dreams, but the world ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... not be forgotten, too, that in the days of "bloody Balfour" he was not merely chivalrous, but even Quixotic, in taking upon himself the mistakes and misdoings of his subordinates in Ireland. He certainly had the makings of a chivalrous figure, and perhaps even a great man. One thinks that he began his descent ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... and I authorise you to give me up for trial if you think that best—or, if you think it unnecessary, in the meanwhile to make preparations for their defence. I hope, sir, that I am as little anxious to be Quixotic as I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... since he had sent his own letter, he had been doubtful of its wisdom, and yet he had not been able to think of any other course that he would have preferred. He knew that the step he had taken in warning the criminal was quixotic, and yet it seemed to him that Lord Blandamer had a certain right to see his own family portrait and papers, before they were used against him. He could not feel sorry that he had given the opportunity, though he had certainly hoped that Lord Blandamer would ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... even thought of taming some hyenas, and training them to the hunt. This idea was by no means quixotic. The hyena is often used for such a purpose, and performs even better than ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... run their course; he agreed with Erica all the time, though his heart impelled him to keep her at home. And as to Eric Haeberlein, it would have needed a far stronger mind than that of the sweet-tempered, quixotic German to resist the generous help offered ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... like a hero—that was one comfort; but, as Edwin Reeves reminded them both, Max might be rewarded for his noble resolve by learning that there was no need to make the sensational story public. If the girl had died or could not be found, it would be—in Mr. Reeves's opinion—foolishly quixotic to rouse sleeping dogs, and ruin himself, to put money in the pockets of the Reynold Dorans, who had more than ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... appointment, Turgot had the chance of being removed to Rouen, and after that to Lyons. Either of these promotions would have had the advantages of a considerable increase of income, less laborious duties, and a much more agreeable residence. Turgot, with a high sense of duty that probably seemed quixotic enough to the Controller-General, declined the preferment, on the very ground of the difficulty and importance of the task that he had already undertaken. 'Poor peasants, poor kingdom!' had been Quesnay's constant exclamation, and it had sunk deep ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... the "wahoo," or winged elm of the South, and there are several other native elms, as well as a number of introductions from the Eastern Hemisphere, with which acquaintance is yet to be made. All of them together, I will maintain with the quixotic enthusiasm of lack of knowledge, are not worth as much as one-half hour spent in looking up under the leafy canopy of our own preeminent American elm—a tree surely among those given by the Creator for the healing ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... meetings and an exchange of plans and confidences, and the end of it all was, that Appleman rode into Mexico on that famous foray led by Shelby, when the tottering throne of Maximilian was almost given new foundation by the quixotic raiders. The story of that foray is well known, and there is no occasion for repeating it. It need only be said that when Shelby's men rode gayly home again, John Appleman was not in their company. He had met an old friend in the turbulent City of Mexico; had, ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... a deserted tower, and were protected against all intrusion by the seal of the Grand Vizier. There were adventures still in store for the captives. Through the scattered villages Dr. Sambucus went up and down, recovering the strayed Corvinian books for the Emperor Rodolph, a strange Quixotic figure always riding alone, with swinging saddle-bags, and a great mastiff running on either side. Many a disappointed wayfarer was turned away from the lonely tower. At last Busbec the great traveller, because he was an ambassador from the Emperor, was allowed ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... deny him beauty such as those "enskied and sainted" wear. This is the romancist's tribute to a minister of God; and sweet the tribute is. With not a few, the bishop is chief hero, next to Jean Valjean. He is redemptive, like the purchase money of a slave. He is quixotic; he is not balanced always, nor always wise; but he falls on the side of Christianity and tenderness and goodness and love—a good way to fall, if one is to fall at all. We love the bishop, and can not help ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... was out at last. Yet Dick was aware that he might very easily have guessed it. This was just the quixotic line his father could have been foreseen ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... uncovering her swimming eyes for a fleeting look at him. Even in the utter desolation of the moment she could not help marveling that this queer-mannered sailor, who spoke like a gentleman and tried to pose as her inferior, who had rescued her with the utmost gallantry, who carried his Quixotic zeal to the point of first supplying her needs when he was in far worse case himself, should be so utterly indifferent to ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... Anglo-French-Spanish movement to compel the Republic of Mexico to discharge her debts to European bondholders, and after a disagreement between the allies which led to the withdrawal of the British and the Spaniards—forty thousand French troops were engaged upon the quixotic task of disciplining Mexican opinion, suppressing civil war, and imposing upon the people an unwelcome and absurd sovereign in the person of Maximilian of Austria. His throne endured as long as the French battalions remained to support it. When they withdrew, Maximilian ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... which the reader will wish there were more. Less than a month before her death, she wrote to a friend a list of benevolent enterprises she has in mind and says, "Oh, it is such a luxury to be able to give without being afraid. I try not to be Quixotic, but I want to rain down blessings on all the world, in token of thankfulness for the blessings that have been rained down ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... refused help by his own children, only Browning's generosity kept Landor from actual want. At Rugby, and at Oxford, his extreme Republicanism brought him into constant trouble; and his fitting out a band of volunteers to assist the Spaniards against Napoleon, in 1808, allies him with Byron and his Quixotic followers. The resemblance to Byron is even more strikingly shown in the poem Gebir, published in 1798, a year made famous by the Lyrical Ballads of ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... her much; the country owes her much." And yet the country was not willing to pay her anything. Mr. Seward's efforts, seconded by other distinguished men, to get a pension for her, were sneered at in Congress as absurd and quixotic, and the effort failed. ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... brilliant woman is there to put him on his mettle and call out his chivalry. The mass of his critics are roundly made game of, in a boisterously genial sally, as "sweeps" officiously concerned at his excess of "smoke." Pacchiarotto is a whimsical tale of a poor painter who came to grief in a Quixotic effort to "reform" his fellows. Rhyme was never more brilliantly abused than in this tour de force, in which the clang of the machinery comes near to killing the music. More seriously, in the finely turned stanzas At the Mermaid, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... means for an appeal (I acted on Mr. Bradlaugh's suggestion and advice, for he acted as counsellor to me all through the weary struggles that lasted till 1888, putting his great legal knowledge at my disposal, though he often disapproved my action, thinking me Quixotic)—but for this, Lewis Lyons would have had to ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... was busy. She had a hard task before her. Alwyn's absurd conscience and Quixotic ideas were difficult to cope with. After his last indiscreet talk she had ventured deftly to remonstrate, and ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... his effort seemed Quixotic, for he confessed at the outset that in science he was "utterly destitute of that kind of knowledge which carries authority," and his argument soon showed that this confession was ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Berenice was moved by this affection for her, which she knew to be genuine; but what a fool her mother had been, what a weak reed, indeed, she was to lean upon! Cowperwood, when he conferred with Mrs. Carter, insisted that Berenice was quixotic, nervously awry, to wish to modify her state, to eschew society and invalidate her wondrous charm by any sort of professional life. By prearrangement with Mrs. Carter he hurried to Pocono at a time when he knew that Berenice was there alone. Ever since ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... course I am very much obliged to you; but you must have been terribly imprudent. Could you not have managed without being discovered in that suspicious attitude? I was so grievously distressed. You are too quixotic—you ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... before Floyd began to be known more widely. He had schemes for the amelioration of the condition of the poor. They were pronounced quixotic; but he kept on. He said he got good out of them ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... with me. Then you can judge whether or not I'm right in the decision I have come to as the result of my thinkings. You can tell my wife as much as you please—of the details, I mean. Perhaps, you had better soften them to her, for you know as well as I do—or better—that her impulsive, quixotic disposition might lead her into worse mistakes than it has done already. Of course, she'll have to know my decision. I am sure that if she allows her reason play, she will agree it ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... was half-way to London he felt that he had been rather foolish and quixotic in not having told her simply and practically what his mother's opposition meant. She must learn it some day; better from him than others. His mother, indeed, might tell her in the letter she had threatened to write. But he thought not. Nobody was more loftily secret as to business affairs than ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Septimus that he had done a quixotic thing in marrying Emmy, any more than to pat himself on the back for a monstrously clever fellow when he had completed a new invention. At the door of the Registry Office he took off his hat, held out his hand, and ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... than to check it. Again, the discovery of such a confederate—to whom they clearly owed their safety—and his arrest would have been quite against the Californian sense of justice, if not actually illegal. It seemed evident that Bill's quixotic sense of honor was ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... manners was carried back to Spain and Germany by Spanish and German princes and governors, to be transmitted to a few courtiers and humanists; but the imagination of the lower classes of Spain and of Germany, absorbed in the Quixotic Catholicism of Loyola and the biblical contemplation of Luther, never came into fertilizing contact with the decaying ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... these were between seventeen and eighteen years of age. One of them explained to me since that they did not want older men because they were afraid that such would not take their Quixotic notions seriously enough. Among them was Lorenzo Tonti, direct descendant of the Tonti, of insurance fame. The youngster had been brought to the United States by one of the followers of Garibaldi, the ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... Caraman, aghast. "You, surely, do not mean again to face the dangers of this barbarous country, to go upon another Quixotic expedition, and drag me with you? Remember you are a woman! Besides, there are plenty of men here for ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... else, and I have this only grudge against him, that he intrigued me to the point of feverishly "skipping," out of sheer excitement to know if and how the deplorable misunderstanding between Flora and her quixotic Captain Anthony was to be cleared up, just like any ordinary decent library-subscriber, instead of the case-hardened critical fellow I naturally take myself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... Goldsmith's friends 'remembered his relating [about the year 1756] a strange Quixotic scheme he had in contemplation of going to decipher the inscriptions on the written mountains, though he was altogether ignorant of Arabic, or the language in which they might be supposed to be written.' Goldsmith's Misc. Works, ed. 1801, i. 40. Percy says that Goldsmith applied ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell |
