"Knight-errant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leaving his youthful bride, the lovely Princess Sabra, in his castle near Coventry, soon levied a powerful army; and, setting sail, no longer as a knight-errant, but as a renowned general, he arrived with his forces on the coast of Portugal, where he was joined by the other six Champions, who each brought troops in proportion to the size of his country. So enchanted were the Portuguese with Saint George, that, having ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... Never had knight-errant been more true to his mistress. Her image had been his talisman as well against danger from without, as against the demon within. It had never left his mind, and he now returned for his reward. He had returned to Charlemont ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... obstinate you can be, Fanny, when you think it necessary to dub yourself any one's champion. Don Quixote was not a better knight-errant than you are. But is it not a pity to take up your lance and shield before an enemy is within sight or hearing? But that was ever the ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... proposals, of Montreal. The ambition of the Provencal, though vast and daring, was not of a consistent and persevering nature. Action and enterprise were dearer to him, as yet, than the rewards which they proffered; and if baffled in one quarter, he turned himself, with the true spirit of the knight-errant, to any other field for his achievements. Louis, king of Hungary, stern, warlike, implacable, seeking vengeance for the murder of his brother, the ill-fated husband of Joanna, (the beautiful and guilty Queen of Naples—the Mary Stuart of ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... one think that this same Natural History is a pursuit fitted only for effeminate or pedantic men. I should say, rather, that the qualifications required for a perfect naturalist are as many and as lofty as were required, by old chivalrous writers, for the perfect knight-errant of the Middle Ages: for (to sketch an ideal, of which I am happy to say our race now affords many a fair realization) our perfect naturalist should be strong in body; able to haul a dredge, climb a rock, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... it was, he laughed genially, and, turning to the landlord, said: "He does not look like a knight-errant who flies to the rescue of maids, and Tory maids at that, does he? But see here, youngster, since you have brought this little traitress into my household, you will have to do your share in converting her to the true ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... had finish'd my Serenade, and had put up my Pipes to be gone, out stalk'd me your two-handed Lady, with a Man at her Girdle like a bunch of Keys, whom I taking for nothing less than some one who had some foul design upon the Gentlewoman, like a true Knight-Errant, did my best ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... speak to her myself. I think she ought to accept you. You've behaved like a knight-errant, Mr. Dryland. ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... murrion[obs3], armet[obs3], cabaset[obs3], vizor[obs3], casquetel[obs3], siege cap, headpiece, casque, pickelhaube, vambrace[obs3], shako &c. (dress) 225. bearskin; panoply; truncheon &c. (weapon) 727. garrison, picket, piquet; defender, protector; guardian &c. (safety) 664; bodyguard, champion; knight-errant, Paladin; propugner[obs3]. bulletproof window. hardened site. V. defend, forfend, fend; shield, screen, shroud; engarrison[obs3]; fend round &c. (circumscribe) 229; fence, entrench, intrench[obs3]; guard &c. (keep safe) 664; guard against; take care of &c. (vigilance) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... it, the most bitter portion of his own wrecked life was the short time he had yet thought happy; three months, spent as knight-errant. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... and chivalrous Champlain was not the enthusiasm of La Salle, nor had he any part in the self-devoted zeal of the early Jesuit explorers. He belonged not to the age of the knight-errant and the saint, but to the modern world of practical study and practical action. He was the hero, not of a principle nor of a faith, but simply of a fixt idea and a determined purpose. As often happens with concentered and energetic natures, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... "Or knight-errant," he continued, "whichever you choose. You want to get out of Quicksands—I'm trying to make it easy for you. Before you leave you have to arrange some place to go. Before we are off with the old we'd better be ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of King Scoriath. King Scoriath had a daughter, who was beautiful; and Maen, of course, acted as a knight was bound to do under such circumstances, and fell desperately in love with the princess. The Lady Moriath's beauty had bewildered more heads than that of the knight-errant; but the Lady Moriath's father and mother were determined their daughter should ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... accidentally that the scroll had been pawned to the merchant from whom he had obtained it, he instituted inquiries as to its owner, and ultimately restored the scroll to him with the addition of five gold ryo. The owner was a knight-errant (ronin) named Imagawa Motome, who thereafter entered Masamune's service and ultimately rose to be a general of infantry (ashigaru). The sympathy which taught Masamune to estimate the pain with which the owner of the scroll must have parted with it was a fine trait of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... been born three or four centuries ago I could have been a knight-errant or a troubadour. But alas! in these days the knight-errants go to the Stock Exchange and the troubadours write for the newspapers. I am not fitted to wrestle with the wild beasts of the money market; I would rather go to Spain ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... you please," cried Lord de Winter, "but don't try to bite, for I warn you that it would be to your disadvantage. There are here no procurators who regulate successions beforehand. There is no knight-errant to come and seek a quarrel with me on account of the fair lady I detain a prisoner; but I have judges quite ready who will quickly dispose of a woman so shameless as to glide, a bigamist, into the bed of Lord de Winter, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Scudery, or any other writer of romance, had introduced a necromancer, who is generally in the train of a knight-errant, making a present to two lovers of a couple of these above-mentioned needles, the reader would not have been a little pleased to have seen them corresponding with one another when they were guarded by spies and watchers, or separated by ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... strange times," observed the president, "when a doctor of divinity and an under-graduate set forth, like a knight-errant and his squire, in search of a stray damsel. Methinks I am an epitome of the church militant, or a new species of polemical divinity. Pray Heaven, however, there be no encounter in store for us; for I utterly forgot ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reference, invisible to our eyes, but very clear to the bright little minds for whom it was intended. Politics were evidently their grand interest; the Duke of Wellington their demi-god. All that related to him belonged to the heroic age. Did Charlotte want a knight-errant, or a devoted lover, the Marquis of Douro, or Lord Charles Wellesley, came ready to her hand. There is hardly one of her prose-writings at this time in which they are not the principal personages, and in which their "august father" does not ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... I know, have always been The haunt of fairies, good or grim; There the knight-errant hasted him; There Bottom found King Oberon's Queen; The Enchanted Castle always stood Deep in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... long way to Madame Bernard's, and Juliet's knight-errant was weary, after an exhausting day in town. He paused outside the gate long enough to clean the dust from his shoes with the most soiled of his two handkerchiefs, then went boldly up the ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... Octavio, you left me pursuing, like a knight-errant, a beauty enchanted within some invisible tree, or castle, or lake, or any thing inaccessible, or rather wandering in a dream after some glorious disappearing phantom: and for some time indeed I knew not whether I slept or waked. ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... read a great way in a romance he has begun, about a knight-errant in search of a father. The King says there are many such about his court; but I never saw them nor heard of them before. The Marchioness de la Motte, his relative, brought it to me, written out in a charming hand, as much as the copybook would hold; and I got through, I know not how far. If he had ...
— English Satires • Various
... Sprouse, being aware of his somewhat ardent interest in the fair captive, took a long and desperate chance on his susceptibility. With incomprehensible boldness he decided to make an accomplice of the eager and unsuspecting knight-errant! His cunningly devised tale,—in which there was more than a little of the truth,— served to excite the interest and ultimately to win the co-operation of the New Yorker. His object in enlisting this support was now perfectly clear to the victim of his duplicity. Barnes had ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... farmers' furrow; but in the selections of this volume, many of them poems by courtesy, men of today and those who are to follow, may sense, at least in some small measure, the service, the glamour, the romance of that knight-errant of the ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... nymphs, with eglantine and roses in their neatly-braided hair, went hand in hand to the flowery mead to weave garlands for their lambkins. If by chance some rude, uncivil fellow dared to molest them, or attempted to throw thorns in their path, there was sure to be a knight-errant not far off ready to rush forward in their defence. But alas! in these degenerate days it is not so. Should a harmless cottage-maid wander out of the highway to pluck a primrose or two in the neighbouring field, the haughty owner ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... Every day a knight-errant or so came along, and the sight of them fired the king's martial spirit every time. He would have forgotten himself, sure, and said something to them in a style a suspicious shade or so above his ostensible degree, and so I always got him well out of the road in time. Then he would stand and look ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ancient philosophies, and many eastern languages. And with this flood of erudition came the generous hope, so often disabused, of reconciling the philosophers with each other, and all alike with the Church. At last he came to Rome. There, like some knight-errant of philosophy, he offered to defend nine hundred bold paradoxes, drawn from the most opposite sources, against all comers. But the pontifical court was led to suspect the orthodoxy of some of these propositions, ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... Street, where there were grown-up sons as well as daughters, without special permission from the lord of the castle; he authorised the visits of Mr Browning, the poet, being fondly assured that Mr Browning's intentions were not those of a burglar, or—worse—an amorous knight-errant. If any daughter of his conceived the possibility of transferring her prime love and loyalty from himself to another, she was even as Aholah and Aholibah who doted upon the Assyrians, captains, and rulers clothed most gorgeously, all of them desirable young men. "If ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... of place for a hermit," said Monica. "He could have had a little cell and told his beads without being disturbed by anybody, except an occasional knight-errant who would blow a horn from the opposite bank. I wonder ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... ill to extend his nightly rambles further than the boundaries of the wood. But with renewed health his restlessness returned, and he wandered hither and thither in search of a mate to share his dwelling. A knight-errant among badgers, he sought adventure for the sake of a lady-love whose face he had ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... unused and unrecognized. These reasons should not have, and probably would not have, prevailed. But Lincoln's personal reluctance to resist all entreaties on behalf of his own forerunner and his own rival was great; and then Fremont came to Lincoln and proposed to him a knight-errant's adventure to succour the oppressed Unionists of Tennessee by an expedition through West Virginia. So he was now to proceed there, but was kept for the present in the mountains near the Shenandoah valley. The way in which the forces under McDowell, Banks and Fremont were scattered ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... old-time place of honour. These stories, however, were as yet so imperfectly known—and only to a few—that the most to be said is that some connection between their reviving popularity and the name of Smollett's knight-errant hero ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... his horse is a mule—what a pity it was not some knight-errant! but I have heard that these fine gentry no ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... said Anna, delighted by the thought of being able, thus, to help her father, and, at the same time, not utterly averse to anything which would make frequent glimpses of her knight-errant an easy certainty. "I don't know ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... season, when the Spaniards organized a cavalcade of the Quixote, he undertook to represent the knight Pentapolin—"him of the rolled-up sleeves,"—and in the Corso there were applause and cries of admiration for the huge biceps that the knight-errant, erect on his horse, revealed. When the spring nights came, the artists marched in a procession across the city to the Jewish quarter to buy the first artichokes—the popular dish in Rome, in the preparation of which an old Hebrew woman was famous. Renovales went at the head ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in an estimate of a fellow-creature, and Darsie's heart had a way of making excuses for the handsome truant, who smiled with such beguiling eyes, had such a pretty knack of compliment, and was—generally!—ready to play knight-errant in her service. She felt herself lucky in possessing so charming a friend to act the part of gallant, and to be at her service when she chose to call. And then quite suddenly she drew a sharp breath and said aloud in a trembling voice, "Oh, Aunt Maria, dear Aunt Maria!" and ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... gesture. "Does that matter? I am concerned with what is to become of you. I was born for your service, my princess, and the service being rendered..." He shrugged and smiled, threw out his hands and let them fall again to his sides in an eloquent gesture. He was the complete courtier, the knight-errant, the romantic preux-chevalier all ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... make it over into another world altogether. Perhaps the child's eye and the child's heart, fresh from God, see and feel more clearly and more justly than we do. For this much is sure—Jeanette was right in keeping to the end the image of Colonel Martin Culpepper as a knight-errant, who needed only a bespangled steed, a little less avoirdupois, and a foolish cause to set him battling in the tourney. As it was, in this humdrum world, the colonel could do nothing more heroic than come rattling ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... spoke, the knight-errant, who had remounted his warhorse, galloped forward to the royal stand, with a silken kerchief bound round his wounded arm. The setting sun cast a ruddy glare upon his burnished arms, and sent his long black ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a more perfect and predestined victim to the finished accomplishments of the Prime Minister. The Old World was tough in wickedness anyhow; the Old World's heart of stone might blunt the sharpest blade of the bravest knight-errant. But this blind and deaf Don Quixote was entering a cavern where the swift and glittering blade was in the ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... that of her enemy.[23] De Leon discovered Florida, and died while seeking there to emulate the successes of Cortes. De Soto discovered the Mississippi[24] and he also perished, lured on in the same knight-errant search for another golden empire to conquer. Who, having read the lives of such adventurers as these, shall ridicule the wildest extravagance in all the romances of chivalry? Wonderland grew real around these men. They achieved impossibilities. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... few years are brilliant and busy ones; and gladly, did space permit, would I give details of those brilliant adventures which make this part of his life that of a true knight-errant. But they are mere episodes in the history; and we must pass them quickly by, only saying that they corroborate in all things our original notion of the man—just, humane, wise, greatly daring and enduring greatly; and filled ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... fashions for 1851 quite deplorable by contrast—especially the shoes, and the way of dressing the hair; we almost came to the conclusion that female beauty when unadorned is adorned the most. It awes and chastens one so! and wakes up the knight-errant inside! even the smartest French boots can't do this! not the pinkest silken hose in all Paris! Not all the frills and underfrills and wonderfrills that M. Paul ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... of being a knight-errant in armor in the Middle Ages. Have the notions and habits, though, of the present day mixed with the necessities of that. No pockets in the armor. No way to manage certain requirements of nature. Can't scratch. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... On his head was a velvet cap, much resembling a black saucepan, and on his side hung a little basket. At last we arrived at the King's Head, where the loyalty of the doctor induced him to alight; and then, knight-errant-like, he took his damsels from off their palfreys, and courteously handed us into the inn.' . . . The party returned to the Wells; and 'the silver Cynthia held up her lamp in the heavens' the while. 'The night silenced all but our divine doctor, who sometimes uttered things fit ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... strangest notion that ever madman in this world hit upon, and that was that he fancied it was right and requisite, as well for the support of his own honor as for the service of his country, that he should make a knight-errant of himself, roaming the world over in full armor and on horseback in quest of adventures, and putting in practice himself all that he had read of as being the usual practices of knights-errant; righting every kind of wrong, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of: Lash, cage, race, buffalo, echo, canto, volcano, portfolio, ally, money, solo, memento, mosquito, bamboo, ditch, chimney, man, Norman,[17] Mussulman, city, negro, baby, calf, man-of-war, attorney, goose-quill, canon, quail, mystery, turkey, wife, body, snipe, knight-errant,[17] donkey, spoonful, aide-de-camp, Ottoman, commander-in-chief, major-general, pony, reply, talisman, court-martial, father-in-law, court-yard, man-trap, Brahman, journey, Henry, stepson, deer, mouthful, Miss Clark,[18] Mr. Jones, Dr. ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... her one foot with as much dignity as possible, and then recognizing me as the person who picked up the contents of aunt Celia's bag, she said, dimpling in the most distracting manner (that's another thing there ought to be a law against), "Thank you again; you seem to be a sort of knight-errant!" ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to the Oregon tribes, and now come hither to the mountain market of 1835 as knight-errant of the Gospel, pulled up his horse at the edge of the encampment and gazed in sheer amazement. His party—except Whitman, who reined in his horse at his friend's side—passed on and joined the shouting throng. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Lakes, but left French America, west of that river and south of the lakes, intact, which shows how the common consent of nations accorded to French valor in exploration the bulk of the North American continent. Essentially chivalrous, the French explorer proved the knight-errant among American discoverers. By the treaty of 1803, Napoleon ceded 1,171,931 square miles to the United States, a tract eight times as large as France itself. France, by rights acquired by discoveries, owned about ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... consented that his young hero, his little knight-errant, his dear son, should go to the distressed lady and open the good news to her, while the great Major Greyson, the warrior invincible, should go around with himself to inspect ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Mancha, full of Castilian honor and enthusiasm, but so completely crazed by reading the most famous books of chivalry, that he not only believes them to be true, but feels himself called upon to become the impossible knight-errant they describe, and actually goes forth into the world, like them, to defend the oppressed and avenge the injured. To complete his chivalrous equipment, which he had begun by fitting up for himself a suit of armor strange to his century, he took an esquire ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... to compare this account with the pseudo Ovid and with Tale clxvi. in Gesta "Of the game of Schaci." Its Schacarium is the chess-board. Rochus (roccus, etc.) is not from the Germ. Rock (a coat) but from Rukh (Pers. a hero, a knight-errant) Alphinus (Ital. Alfino) is Al-Firzn ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... having used every argument which might shake his purpose of returning to the imperial city, to the very point of making it a quarrel with him in person, at length abandoned him to his own discretion, and pointed him out to the Count of Thoulouse, as he passed, as a wild knight-errant, incapable of being influenced by any thing save his own wayward fancy. "He brings not five hundred men to the crusade," said Godfrey; "and I dare be sworn, that even in this, the very outset of the undertaking, he knows not where these five hundred men are, and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... with one of the strangest whims that ever madman stumbled on in this world, for it seemed to him right and necessary that he himself should become a knight-errant, and ride through the world to seek adventures and practise in person all that he had read about the knights of old. Therefore he resolved that he would make a name for himself by revenging the injuries of others, and courting all manner of dangers and difficulties, until in ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... "The Wickliffe boy—is a knight-errant born out of time," she said. "I'm wondering if it will last. We came to know him last summer—mother and I—down at Hollymount, my uncle's place in Virginia. The Wickliffe boy, Billy by name, lives at Lyonesse, which is Hollymount's next ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... negotiations that might end in peace, nor my ears to the blessings a grateful nation would shower on us, if our visit had such a result; but I did not expect these things. I expected to be smeared from head to foot with Copperhead slime, to be called a knight-errant, a seeker after notoriety, an abortive negotiator, and a meddlesome volunteer diplomatist; but I expected also, if a good Providence spared our lives, and my pen did not forget the English language, to be able to tell the North ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... difference between the mode of travelling in those days and at present! At that time, when a gentleman went on a distant visit, he sallied forth like a knight-errant on an enterprise, and every family excursion was a pageant. How splendid and fanciful must one of those domestic cavalcades have been, where the beautiful dames were mounted on palfreys magnificently caparisoned, with embroidered ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... like the bold knight-errant, From his castle who would roam, Trusting her, my faithful steward, For a strict account of home; And each day I toil, and hazard All that any man may dare, For a resting-place at even, And the love ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... all this was somewhat inconsiderate and ungallant and slightly humiliating; I should have taken the part of the knight-errant rescuing the damsel in distress, but at that moment only the direct ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... quite an interesting fellow, young lady," the doctor said, with a rather slight twinkle of his eye. "A very knight-errant! But there is the house now; we shall soon ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... escort to pieces, slew also the merchants and travellers. He seemed to give the sword the more heartily in that he sought it for himself, but could never get it. No doubt he deserved to get it. He performed deeds of impossible foolhardy gallantry, the deeds of a knight-errant; rode solitary, made single-handed rescues, suffered himself to be cut off from his posts, and then with a handful of knights, or alone, indeed, carved his way back to Darum. Des Barres, the Earl of Leicester and the Grand Master, never left his side; Gaston of Bearn used to sleep at the foot of ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... Charles V. He was no knight-errant like his father, and his diplomatic gifts, tact, and patience made him much better fitted than John for outwitting his English enemies and for restoring order to France. Slowly but surely he grappled with the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... bluffs that compose the left-hand side of the canon at this point, and which have been worn by the elements into all manner of fantastic shapes, many of them calling to mind the towers and turrets of some old-world castle so vividly, that one needs but the pomp and circumstance of old knight-errant days to complete the illusion. But, as one gazes with admiration on these towering buttresses of nature, it is easy to realize that the most massive and imposing feudal castle, or ramparts built with human ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... graceful if not realistic, they have always a grave serenity of expression; and yet withal they endear themselves in a way wholly their own. It is strange that a period which has bestowed so much appreciation on the work of the artists of "the sixties" has seen no knight-errant with "Arthur Hughes" inscribed on his banner—no exhibition of his black-and-white work, no craze in auction-rooms for first editions of books he illustrated. He has, however, a steady if limited band of very faithful devotees, and perhaps—so inconsistent are we all—they love his work ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... say!" says I. "And you such a star at this knight-errant business! Still want to see Josie, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... Palestine in 1898 inaugurated a Levantine policy destined to have momentous results. On the Bosphorus he scrupled not to clasp the hand of Sultan Abdul Hamid II., still reeking with the blood of the Christians of Armenia and Macedonia. At Jerusalem he figured as the Christian knight-errant, but at Damascus as the champion of the Moslem creed. After laying a wreath on the tomb of Saladin, he made a speech which revealed his plan of utilising the fighting power of Islam. He said: "The three hundred million Mohammedans who live scattered over the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... we were told were presents to us from the Emperor, and we consequently made our bows as they passed. We were also amused with a Chinese puppet-shew which differs but little from an English one. There are a distressed princess confined in a castle, and a knight-errant, who, after fighting wild beasts and dragons, sets her at liberty and marries her; wedding-feasts, jousts, and tournaments. Besides these, there was also a comic drama, in which some personages not unlike punch and his wife, Bandemeer and Scaramouch performed capital ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... conceiving. At any rate, he was free to bring her his daily tale of worship, to glean a look of kindness from her clear eyes. This was his happiness. For her sake he would sacrifice it. For Zora's sake he would marry Emmy. The heart of Septimus was that of a Knight-Errant confident in the righteousness of his quest. The certainty had come all at once in the flash of inspiration. Besides, was he not carrying out Zora's wish? He remembered her words. It would be the greatest pleasure he could give her—to become her brother, her real brother. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... ha!" said the Constable,—"I am no knight-errant, to bind myself by promise to grant it ere I know its import; but do thou come to my pavilion to-morrow, and thou wilt not find me unwilling to do ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... little satisfied sigh as she selected an ortolan, "is a very satisfactory place to be carried off to. And you," she added, leaning across the table and touching his fingers for a moment tenderly, "are a very delightful knight-errant." ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... could cure a knight-errant of his sentiment, then Jimmy Hambleton had been free of his passion for the Face. His plunge overboard had been followed by a joyous swim, a lusty call to the yacht for "Help," and a growing amazement when he realized that it was the yacht's intention to pass him by. He had swum valiantly, determined ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... for there upon the morn should be a great tournament: and the lord of the tower was in his castle and looked out at a window, and saw a damosel, a dwarf, and a knight armed at all points. So God me help, said the lord, with that knight will I joust, for I see that he is a knight-errant. And so he armed him and horsed him hastily. And when he was on horseback with his shield and his spear, it was all red, both his horse and his harness, and all that to him longeth. And when that he came nigh him he weened it had been his ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... and dignified, learned and high-minded; with strong imagination perverted by romance, and crazed with ideas of chivalry. He is the hero of a Spanish romance by Cervantes. Don Quixote feels himself called on to become a knight-errant to defend the oppressed, and succor the injured. He engages for his squire Sancho Panza, a middle-aged, ignorant rustic, selfish, but full of good sense, a gourmand, attached to his master, shrewd and credulous. The knight goes forth on his ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... took off his hat, and approached the lady, deferential as knight-errant of old awaiting the behest of his ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Welles, with the sweetest magnanimity. "Sweet Mrs Phoebe is a woodland bird, untrammelled as yet by those fetters which we men and women of the world must needs bear. 'Tis truly delightful to see the charming generosity and the admirable fire with which she plays the knight-errant. Indeed, Madam, such disinterested warmth and fervour of heart are seen but too seldom in this worn old world. Suffer me to entreat you not to chide Mrs Phoebe for her charming ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... myself in the mirror and shook a disapproving head. "You're no knight-errant," I told my impassive image. "You're too correct, too indifferent-looking altogether. Better not get beyond your depth!" I decided for luncheon, followed by a leisurely knotting of the threads of my Parisian acquaintance. Then, as if some malign ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... than one who seems to regard the good of others. He, in civil life, whose thoughts turn upon schemes which may be of general benefit, without further reflection, is called a projector; and the man whose mind seems intent upon glorious achievements, a knight-errant. The ridicule among us runs strong against laudable actions; nay, in the ordinary course of things, and the common regards of life, negligence of the public is an epidemic vice. The brewer in his excise, the merchant ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... of Gaul, the hero of a celebrated mediaeval poem, written originally in Spanish, which recounts his heroism in war and constancy in love. He is the typical knight-errant and ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... friend his metaphysical speculations; he was familiar with the drama of Spain, the poems of Ronsard, the sonnets of Italy. Sidney combined the wisdom of a grave councillor with the romantic chivalry of a knight-errant. "I never heard the old story of Percy and Douglas," he says, "that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet." He flung away his life to save the English army in Flanders, and as he lay dying they ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... these are strange times,' observed the President, 'when a doctor of divinity and an undergraduate set forth like a knight-errant and his squire, in search of a stray damsel. Methinks I am an epitome of the church militant, or a new species of polemical divinity. Pray Heaven, however, there he no encounter in store for us; for I utterly forgot to provide ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... quicken sympathy, to purify morals, to make men truly brave and loyal. Of course this ideal of character was not in the days of chivalry—ideals are not often now—very fully realised. The Mediaeval, like the Modern, abused his power of muscle, of sword, of rank. His liberty as a knight-errant sometimes descended into the licence of a highwayman; his pride in the opportunity for helpfulness grew to be the braggadocio of a bully; his freedom of personal choice became the insolence of lawlessness; his pretended purity and ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... and on thy lady call. This is said gayly, or sportively, as keeping up the idea of a knight-errant. Cf. 475 above. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... diagonally across stream. For Balder, having charged his imagination with castles, warlike chieftains, and beautiful princesses, had finally arrived at the conclusion that the stone house was an enchanter's castle; the figure he had seen, an imprisoned lady; himself, a knight-errant bound to rescue her and give the wicked enchanter his deserts. This idea possessed his brain for the moment more vividly than do realities most men. The plumed helmet was on his head, he glittered with shining arms and sword, his heart warmed and throbbed with ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... are significant. His relatives found in him a kinsman who was more than kind. To his intimates he appeared as a friend in need who is a friend indeed. To the man who had done him some service, of tenacious memory. To the victim of injustice, a knight-errant. And to those who had incurred danger by his side, a saviour second ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... had a tendency to subtract from my vocation as a missionary. I was no longer a knight-errant, prepared on all occasions by dint of arms to vindicate the cause of every principle that was unjustly handled, and every character that was wrongfully assailed. Meanwhile I returned to the field, occasionally and uncertainly. It required some provocation and incitement ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... against the vain and premature hypotheses of the physiologists of his day that the greatest and noblest intellect in Greece revolted. Socrates was the knight-errant of philosophy. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... of the factors in man-building, and the scales soon began to fall from his eyes. Dignity is a good thing to stand on, but a poor thing to travel with, and Max soon found it the most cumbersome piece of luggage a knight-errant could carry. ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... ladies' maids tripping about in neat morning dresses. After seeing for a long time little but rusticity, their lively manner, and gay inviting appearance, pleased me so much, that I thought, for the moment, I could have been a knight-errant for them. [Footnote: On reflection, at the distance of several years, I wonder that my venerable fellow-traveller should have read this passage ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... afraid of Rudin, and cautiously tried to win his favour. Volintsev had got on to curious terms with him. Rudin called him a knight-errant, and sang his praises to his face and behind his back; but Volintsev could not bring himself to like him and always felt an involuntary impatience and annoyance when Rudin devoted himself to enlarging on his good points in his presence. 'Is he making ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... the king said. "I would that I could ramble about and act the knight-errant as you do. 'Tis tiresome to be in the hands of councillors, who are ever impressing upon me that I must not do this or that, as if I were a child. I would gladly have you here about my person, but, as Sir Ralph has told me, you ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... "the next time I play the knight-errant, may God send me a less observant damsel. There's nothing to forgive. The plain truth is that I was frightened, a little bit. But I'm new to this sort of thing, and I hope to improve." Then, after a pause, I met her eyes full with mine and added, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... variety of needs, spiritual or other. It seemed to foreshadow that capability of reticence in Deronda that his imagination was much occupied with two women, to neither of whom would he have held it possible that he should ever make love. Hans Meyrick had laughed at him for having something of the knight-errant in his disposition; and he would have found his proof if he had known what was just now going on in Deronda's mind about ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... ridiculous, whatever his intention may have been, and the girl felt it with an access of frenzy; but at this point Tim Carrol felt himself called upon to intervene in his new character as knight-errant. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... least the fair damsel could do for her knight-errant was to bind up his wounds, but Cis was too shy to show any disposition so to do, and it was Mrs. Talbot who salved the scratch for him. She had a feeling for the motherless youth, upon whom she foreboded that a fatal game might ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Cicely came up the garden-path, and, "Upon my word, Will," declared Master Jonson, "the lad is a credit to this old town of thine. A plucky fellow, I say, a right plucky fellow. Found the lass and brought her home all safe and sound—why, 'tis done like a true knight-errant!" ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... had determined to go as a Crusader to the rescue of the Holy Land. From his mother, who had herself taken part in the Second Crusade, he had heard many stories of the East,—that land of wonders and marvelous adventures. Richard was by nature a rover, a warrior, a knight-errant. So it seemed to him a most delightful prospect to travel, to see strange lands and peoples, to fight in a holy war; and thus to indulge his own love of adventure and of battle while advancing the glory of God. Nay, to do him justice, Richard was religious too, in the strange fierce fashion ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... the letter Captain O'Toole gathers his friends, borrows a horse here, a carriage there, and a hundred guineas from Heaven knows whom, comes to the rescue like a knight-errant, and retells the old story of how ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... go, then," said Henri; "this is the last time I shall play the knight-errant for any one against his will;" and, reentering the wood as the carriage dashed off at full speed, he proceeded by narrow paths toward the castle, followed at a short distance by Grandchamp and his ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... knight-errant Cochrane added the shrewd and humorous sagacity of a Scotchman. If he had commanded fleets he would have rivalled the victories of Nelson, and perhaps even have outshone the Nile and Trafalgar. And to warlike genius of the first order Cochrane added a certain weird and impish ingenuity which his ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... of her, and of any one in fact, but he was without riches, only a knight-errant with his sword for his fortune, and his great love his only title; and he had always refrained from ever telling her anything of his love, for his pride prevented him, and you know a poor girl even though she ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... in the lake where frogs made merry, the frogs being about the only wild animals left in the Stromovka. Things were very different in this park when it was known as the Thiergarten, Hortus Ferarum, as long ago as the days of King John, the knight-errant ruler of Bohemia. It appears that bison, "aurochs," were kept here, and it is recorded that the sole surviving specimen died in 1566, which fact Archduke Ferdinand, the Kaiser's lieutenant, reported to Emperor Maximilian; he was thereupon ordered to ask ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... itself—nothing less than the reinstatement before the world of the family her mother had disgraced, the once-proud Kildares of Storm. She was going forth to do battle alone for the tarnished honor of her name, a gallant little knight-errant, tight-lipped and heavy-hearted, and far more afraid than ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... or two, when I have had time to put my thoughts on paper; but, if I mistake not, some of the most important points will be discussed before that, for Fellowes, I hear, is a very knight-errant of 'spiritualism,' and it is a thousand to one but he attempts to convert me. I intend to let him ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... look astonished! You seem to wonder and ask yourselves who is this modern Quixote. What mean this costume of by-gone centuries—this golden chariot—these richly caparisoned steeds? What is the name and purpose of this curious knight-errant? Gentlemen, I will condescend to answer your queries. I am Monsieur Mangin, the great charlatan of France! Yes, gentlemen, I am a charlatan—a mountebank; it is my profession, not from choice, but from necessity. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... an attractive side. Perhaps the art career need not be wholly given up. Perhaps, too, there was a better field for him in New York than here—old Mr. Crocker had always told him this. Then, too, there was something of fascination after all, in going out alone like a knight-errant to conquer the world. And in that great Northern city, too, with its rush and whirl and all that it held for him of mystery! How many times had Mr. Crocker talked to him by the hour of its delights. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... no one. Pass over? I hope he will not pass over it, I only want an excuse like that for turning kempery-man—knight-errant, as those Norman puppies call it,—like Regnar Lodbrog, or Frithiof, or Harold Hardraade; and try what man can do for himself in the world with nothing to help him in heaven and earth, with neither saint nor angel, friend or counsellor, to see to him, save his wits and his ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... defeat than that which he inflicted there upon the Saracens; and although the fact that his generalship achieved this, might have caused some jealousy to the other commanders, this might have died away could he between the battles have been a general, and nothing more. But alas! he is in addition a knight-errant—and such a knight-errant as Europe has never seen before. Wherever there is danger, Richard will plunge into the midst. There are brave men in all the three armies; but the strongest and bravest are as children to King Richard. Alone he can dart into ranks of the infidels, and cut a lane for ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... its loopholes, and being in every way inferior to the powerful machines I saw working along the southern frontier. Nevertheless it is a useful means of reconnaissance, nor is a journey in it devoid of interest. An armoured train! The very name sounds strange; a locomotive disguised as a knight-errant—the agent of civilisation in the habiliments of chivalry. Mr. Morley attired as Sir Lancelot would seem scarcely more incongruous. The possibilities of attack added to the keenness of the experience. We started at one o'clock. A company ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... than Calhoun, but they had been playmates from babyhood, and were great friends. Jennie called him her knight-errant. More than once he had carried a pair of black eyes in fighting her battles when some of the larger boys ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... Emile a knight-errant, a redresser of wrongs, a paladin? Shall he thrust himself into public life, play the sage and the defender of the laws before the great, before the magistrates, before the king? Shall he lay petitions before the judges and plead in the law courts? ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Had the King-maker been the statesman-soldier that he has had the credit of being, he never would have fought Edward until he had been joined by Margaret; and he must have known that her non-arrival was owing to contrary winds, he having been himself a naval commander. But he acted like a knight-errant, not like a general, gave battle, and was defeated and slain, "The Last of the Barons." Having triumphed at Barnet, Edward marched to meet Margaret's army, which was led by Somerset, and defeated it on the 4th of May, after a hardly-contested action at Tewkesbury. It was on that field ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... afoot and harnessed cap-a-pee. The Moor towards her raised his haughty front, And straight blasphemed the eternal Hierarchy, That horse, so richly trapped and passing fair, He had not found in a knight-errant's care. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... candidate Miss Blair reappears. Favoured as she was by his father, it would have been easy to bring things to a climax, but on her mother's part there was some not unnatural coldness over his indiscreet talk about his love of the heiress. Bozzy was a convivial knight-errant in what was called 'Saving the ladies.' At clubs and gatherings any member would toast his idol in a bumper, and then another champion would enter his peerless Dulcinea in two bumpers, to be routed by the original toper taking off four. The deepest drinker 'saved his lady,' as the phrase ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... and preserve me from heroic presents. I cannot possibly at this distance begin a new courtship of regalia; for I suppose all those hams were to be converted into watches and toys. Now it would suit Sir Paul Methuen very well, who is a knight-errant at seventy-three, to carry on an amour between a Mrs. Chenevix's(890) shop and a noble collar in Florence; but alas! I am neither old enough nor young enough to be gallant, and should ill become the writing of heroic epistles to a fair mistress in Italy-no, no: "ne sono uscito con ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... eye at him. "See here, you are not a knight-errant. The age of chivalry is over." The novelist paused and exclaimed: "What am I saying! The age of chivalry is not over. It can't be. Last night, Verelst dined ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus |
