"Quixotic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... spite of his effort to keep the blood back from his face. "You have solved the problem, and won't make use of the greatest invention of all the ages! Surely, Professor, that is a little quixotic, ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... agree on that point, mamma," she said, quickly, "I have what you call a Quixotic notion, perhaps, and that is that we are attracted toward those whom Heaven intended for us, and if this be so he would not have been attracted toward Faynie if he ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... replied the leader; "it's a rule, sir. I wouldn't break through it. I act entirely upon principle! I can't encourage robbery and vagrancy. It's Quixotic." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... away of this smoke a sort of chimerical and Quixotic undertaking? Not in the least. The experiments appear to be decisive upon this point; and had there been a reasonable care for the health, beauty, and cleanliness of the towns where their work is carried on, the manufacturers would long ago have contrived, I believe, that there ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... such promise. What good was she to do by interceding between her son and Miss Nevill? and why was she to lay herself open to the chance of a rebuff from that young lady? It had been a senseless and quixotic idea on Maurice's part altogether. Young women do not take back a jilted lover because the man's mother advises them to do so; nor is a broken-off marriage likely to get itself re-settled in consequence of the interference of ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... general favour to-day, namely, as an indispensable foundation of all legislative regulations. For from such a standpoint the pure and sacred striving after light and truth, to say the least, would seem quixotic and criminal if it should venture in its feeling of justice to denounce the authoritative belief as a usurper who has taken possession of the throne of truth and maintained ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... fallen chestnuts, scarcely realizing the novelty of the task so absorbed was she in her sudden Quixotic project. Yet, as she groped among the brown leaves at the foot of her tree, her fingers came in contact with something wholly different from chestnuts or their thorny burrs. It was hard as a stone, yet it wasn't a stone. It was half-buried in ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... "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 ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... interested in other things. What ailed Don Quixote was that he and his contemporaries wanted different things; the only ideals that count are those which express the possible development of an existing force. Reformers must never forget that three legs are a Quixotic ideal; two good legs a ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... 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 if ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... Vetch, and do 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
... savagely. "Why, why, is it that I must always blunder upon such scenes, to make me miserable for days! Can it be—can it possibly be," he asked himself—"that she cares for the man; that she encourages him; that she has a foolish, Quixotic notion that she can raise ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... Robert's office that morning, with the result that I was able to make my innocence as clear to him as I had already done to his wife. Sir Robert expressed the opinion that my action in taking the blame upon myself had been somewhat quixotic; but when I explained my reasons in full for doing so, he admitted that it seemed to be the only thing possible, and was good enough to say that it reflected the greatest ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... Quixotic idea you have gotten into your head that you should go back to the mountains and spend your life trying to help your ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... father's deliberate choice that Ireen and I have been imprisoned in the narrow limits of Millbrook society. For myself I do not complain. If Mr. Carstyle chooses to place others before his wife it is not for his wife to repine. His course may be noble—Quixotic; I do not allow myself to pronounce judgment on it, though others have thought that in sacrificing his own family to strangers he was violating the most sacred obligations of domestic life. This is the opinion of my pastor and of other valued friends; but, as I have always ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... civilized white man would not do, even if his legitimate wife and all his outside concubines were to have twins or triplets every nine months; so that, even as strange as it may appear, civilization must need go to the wild Bushmen in search of that grand old Quixotic chivalry that was in ancient times always ready to sacrifice itself for the welfare ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... and suggests family acres, and entails, and a position in the county. (In which case I know a good many people who are landlords on a very extensive scale, and have made allowances for their tenants the generosity of which may be described as Quixotic.) But as a general rule, and in times less exceptionally hard, though Shakespeare tells us 'How apt the poor are to be proud,' they are ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... make their appeal to the intelligence and conscience of all classes, instead of to the interests of a special class, they could probably double their numerical strength at once. To many, therefore, it seems a fatuous and quixotic policy to preach such a doctrine, and it is very often charitably ascribed to the peculiar intellectual and moral myopia ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... friend, the new light, to whom I listened once on board ship, while he launched into a diatribe upon the jinrikisha question, the degrading practice, as he termed it, of using men for horses,—I wonder, I say, what he would have said to this! He was a quixotic youth, at the time returning from abroad, where he had picked up many new ideas. His proposed applications of them did him great credit, more than they are likely to win among the class for whom they ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... direct to the abominable ferry. I said, "I know nothing of them;" but now I verily believe you mean to twit me with my former experiment in railway knowledge, and have no intention to purchase shares in the La Mancha Company (and I doubt if there be any such) to countenance your Quixotic pleasantry. I did speculate once, it is true, in one—London and Falmouth Scheme—with very large promises. I was then living at W——, when one day, just before I was going to sit down to dinner, a chaise stops at my door, out steps a very "smart ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... white 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
... quickly yielded to the force of the attraction. Nature had given him a peculiar mobility of temperament, and a strong instinctive sense of beauty under every diversity of form. Moreover, resistance would have been useless and Quixotic. In literature, as in politics, dynasties perish through their own weakness. The classical school of France had no living representative around whom its adherents could have rallied. Its only watchword was "The Past," which is always an omen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... don't believe he's guilty," repeated Viner. "And I want to do something for him. You may think me quixotic, but I'd like to help him. Is there anything to prevent you from going to him, telling him that I'm convinced of his innocence and that I should like to ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... not say that she knew that he did not love her; she did not tell him how much his quixotic chivalry moved her. Nor did she tell him that she knew only too well that she could lead him to hell, as he said, but that that was the only place that she could lead him. These things she felt positive of, but to mention ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... intense earnestness, and said, "No, we will not leap down. We will stop the train." With these words you left me, and crept along the foot-board towards the front of the train. Full of half angry anxiety at what seemed to me a Quixotic act, I followed. In one of the carriages we passed I saw my mother and eldest brother, unconscious as the rest. Presently we reached the last carriage, and saw by the lurid light of the furnace that the voice ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... pasha, returning with a booty of slaves from a recent razzia. She besought him to release the unhappy creatures, and when he refused, purchased eight of them, immediately setting them at liberty, and supplying them also with provisions. This has been ridiculed as a quixotic act; but to our thinking it was an act of generous womanly enthusiasm, which may be accepted as redeeming many of the faults and failings of Miss Tinne's character, and compensating for the frivolities which overclouded the real motive of her enterprise. To every benevolent impulse her heart ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... has that charge of untruthfulness been repeated, and so generally is it now accepted, that it seems almost Quixotic to try to fight ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... Hellespont himself and catching an ague for his pains. A simple tale, yet I have included more than is ordinarily found in the recital in order to show how Boito utilized and added to it. A simple tale, but with what lovely fervor have the poets sung it over and over again! Byron could smile at his own Quixotic feat in the lines which he wrote six days after its accomplishment, but in "The Bride of Abydos" he did not attempt to conceal the affection which he felt for the tale, or his pride in the fact that Helle's buoyant wave had borne his limbs as well as Leander's; ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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 him, because he was not qualified ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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 ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... sharply upbraided for not having done as the author pleases. We are first assured that we are the finest fellows in the world in our own right; and then it appears that we are only fine fellows in so far as we practise a most quixotic code of morals. The disciple who saw himself in clear ether a moment before is plunged down again among the fogs and complications of duty. And this is all the more overwhelming because Whitman insists not only on love between sex and sex, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he converted his whole life into an adventure, a kind of quixotic pursuit of the lost loved one, Pleasure. In the mean time, his heart was dead to all the better and nobler feelings. But, at one time, it seemed as if a higher and more serious inclination promised permanently to enchain this dreaded rival of all ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... the Philippines. To many this eventuality did not seem objectionable, as is indicated by the remark, already quoted, of an American official to certain Germans: "We don't want the Philippines; why don't you take them?" That this attitude was foolishly Quixotic is obvious, but more effective in the molding of public opinion was the ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... he was not likely to be overreached in his bargain, however much he might repent of it; and when Mr. Gregory pointed across the road and said, "The 'Little England' farm lies over there, but produces less and less every year. The land is exhausted," Sir Robert thought, "The fellow is either quixotic or doesn't wish to sell. I rather think the first: there has certainly been no shuffling and pretending." Aloud he said, "The soil can't be exhausted. It is virgin still compared to that of England, and all that it needs is careful cultivation. It seems ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... 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
... I read "The Children of the Abbey," and this opened a new field of thought. My dreams, instead of being peopled with fairies and genii, were now filled with distressed damsels who met with all sorts of persecutions and Quixotic adventures, and finally ended where they ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... 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 Italian liberator, who spent a few years in New ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... themselves, but connected with the more vivid interest that youth awakens. There was in him still so much of viva, city and fire, in his errors and crotchets so much of the self-delusion of youth, that one could scarce fancy him other than young. Those Quixotic, exaggerated notions of honor, that romance of sentiment which no hardship, care, grief, disappointment, could wear away (singular in a period when, at two and twenty, young men declare themselves blases!), seemed to leave him all the charm of boyhood. A season ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gave up that Quixotic fight against windmills, and said to my own familiar spirit, ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... Walter Tyrrel could have got his friend to accept such terms, indeed, he would gladly, for Cleer's sake, have asked Le Neve to marry on an allowance of half the Penmorgan rent-roll. But in this commercial age, such quixotic arrangements are simply impossible. So Tyrrel set to work with fiery zeal to find out what openings were just then to be had; and first of all for that purpose he went to call on a parliamentary ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... the prince. "It is Quixotic. San Giacinto has plenty of money without ruining us. Even if he finds it out I will fight the case to the end. I am master here, as my father and my father's father were before me, and I will not give up what is mine without a struggle. Besides, who assures us that he is really what he represents ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... your voluntary goodness, Maud. But you are young, inexperienced; and it is, I hold it, my duty to stand between you and any dealing with your property at so unripe an age. Some people may call this Quixotic. In my mind it is an imperious mandate of conscience; and I peremptorily refuse to disobey it, although within three weeks an execution ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... 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. But while combining in some degree the excellences of either, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... notions had become at this epoch somewhat relaxed by my traffic on the coast, so that I grew to be no better than folks of my cloth. I was fond of excitement; my craft was sadly in want of a cargo; and, as the mate narrated the helmsman's story, the Quixotic idea naturally got control of my brain that I was destined to become the avenger of the poisoned captain. I will not say that I was altogether stimulated by the noble spirit of justice; for it is quite possible ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... a whisper. "He will hear you. Ha!" he continued after a short pause, during which they moved on towards the mess-room, "you begin to find out his amiable military qualities, do you! But tell me, Ronayne, what the deuce has put this Quixotic expedition into your head? What great interest do you take in these fishermen, that you should volunteer to break your shins in the wood, this dark night, for the purpose of seeking them, and that on the very day when your ladye faire honors these walls, if I may ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... The man was Henry Grey. An amazing encounter! I had never seen him, as you may know. I did not wait to reply to him because the Rebel pickets were not so considerate as their colonel. I recalled Uncle Jim's casual mention of Henry Grey as a rather light-minded, quixotic man. I am glad he is, but imagine what a tragedy failed to materialize because two men were awkward with the pistol. But what a strange meeting too! It is not the only case. A captain I know took his own brother ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... first instance for protection against Germany, to Germany if she is assailed from the French side. In either case we should hold ourselves bound to exercise our influence, but not as principals. Any other course would be impossibly quixotic, and would only have the effect of destroying our power to help ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... flashed the memory of Ned Landon and his malignant intention—born of baffled desire and fierce jealousy— to tarnish the fair name of the girl he coveted,—then, his uncle's quixotic and costly way of ridding himself of such an enemy at any price. He understood now old Jocelyn's talk of his "bargain" on the last night of his life,-and what a futile bargain it was, after all!—for was not Jenny of the Mill-Dykes fully informed of the reason why ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... Frances, "by simply being turned out to grass!" So it was then that they had tried to drug their first rising doubts with the tumult of incessant travel and change. His wife had lured him to secluded places, she had struggled to interest him in a language or two, she had planned quixotic courses of reading—as though a man such as he might be remolded by a few months of modern authors!—and carried him off to centres of gaiety—as though the beat of Hungarian bands and outlandish dances could drive that inmost ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... crushes out that same Popular 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 has opposed, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... 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 loyalty of ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the Quixotic redemption in specie was beyond him entirely. He gave it up. The counting of discs was more tangible to his philosophy. His rusty black tile, so wondrously become a cornucopia of wealth, had by that same magic upset the old fellow into a kind of hysterical gaiety, which ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... a complex maze, And Nature's laws are most despotic. Vice is not killed by kindly craze. Nor suffering quelled by zeal Quixotic. Big questions the Big Scheme beset. Bid Pity think, and do not ask it Too blindly all its eggs to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... and comes down out of history as often as we hear or read of some public man parting with all his own past, as well as with all his leaders and patrons and allies and colleagues in the present, and taking his solitary way out after the truth. Many may call that man Quixotic, visionary, unpractical, imprudent, and he may be all that and more, but to follow conscience and the love of truth even when they are for the time leading him wrong is noble, and is every way far better both for himself and for the ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... 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 in ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... to make still greater efforts and greater sacrifices. He had been hampered, as well as many others of our great commanders, by the quixotic and blundering interference of the authorities at Richmond, and had become accustomed to it. There can be no question at this late day that the end, as it did come, had long since dawned upon the great mind ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... "I suppose Grexon thinks I am very Quixotic," he thought, "coming to London to tilt with the windmills of the Press. But Don Quixote was wise in spite of his apparent madness, and Grexon will recognize my wisdom when he sees my Dulcinea, bless her! Humph! I wonder if Hay could ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... '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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... 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 ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... is above the middle size, with marked features, and an air somewhat stately and Quixotic. He reminds one of some of Holbein's heads, grave, saturnine, with a slight indication of sly humour, kept under by the manners of the age or by the pretensions of the person. He has a peculiar sweetness in his smile, and great depth and manliness and a rugged harmony, in the tones ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... extent I am tongue-tied. I may tell you, however, that I am a secret agent of the government, to which I have volunteered my services solely because I love peace and hate war, and am desirous of doing all I can to promote the first and abate the last. The idea may appear to you Quixotic, but—" ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... young Bannister, when he had heard the alterations desired by Miss Panney, "is not this a little quixotic? Excuse me for saying so. Mr. Haverley is not even related to you, and ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... desperate, devil-may-care. hot-blooded, hotheaded, hotbrained[obs3]; headlong, headstrong; breakneck; foolhardy; harebrained; precipitate, impulsive. overconfident, overweening; venturesome, venturous; adventurous, Quixotic, fire eating, cavalier; janty[obs3], jaunty, free and easy. off one's guard &c. (inexpectant) 508[obs3]. Adv. post haste, a corps perdu[Fr], hand over head, tete baissee[Fr], headforemost[obs3]; happen what may, come what may. Phr. neck or nothing, the devil being in one; non semper temeritas est ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... confronted by one of the most dangerous crises of his whole life, Lorenzo rose to the occasion and effected a solution of the difficulty by daring to perform what was undoubtedly one of the bravest acts ever achieved by a diplomatist. By some statesmen it might be condemned as foolhardy, by others as quixotic. Its very foolhardiness and quixotry fascinated the man it was intended to influence, the blood-thirsty, cruel, and pitiless Ferrante of Naples, who was restrained from crime by the fear neither of God nor man, and who had actually slain ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... back with a bundle of Cissie's clothes. Tump took the bundle of dainty lingerie, the intimate garments of the woman he loved, and set forth on his quixotic errand. He tied it to his shoulder-holster and set out. Peter went a little of the way with him. It was almost dusk when they started. The chill of approaching night stung the men's faces. As they walked past the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... 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 ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... magnanimity of Ucita. He regarded the message as one of the stratagems of war, dictated either by fear or cowardice. He therefore ordered the trumpets to sound the advance, his only fear being, that the chief might escape. Porcallo, a Quixotic knight, had no element of timidity in his character. He led his troops. He never said "Go," but "Follow." Pressing rapidly forward, the little band soon arrived upon the border of a vast and dismal morass, utterly pathless, stretching ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... 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
... him that to touch upon them all would fill a volume. There were the patriotism and the Americanism, as much a part of him as the marrow of his bones, and from which sprang all those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers; those trenchant assaults upon evil-doers in public office, those quixotic efforts to redress wrongs, and those simple and dexterous exposures of this and that, from an absolutely unexpected point of view. He was a quickener of the public conscience. That people are beginning to think tolerantly of preparedness, that a nation which at one time looked yellow as a dandelion ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... Hilyar behaved most kindly and courteously to the prisoners; and, as already said, he fought his ship most ably, for it would have been quixotic to a degree to forego his advantages. But previous to the battle his conduct had been over-cautious. It was to be expected that the Essex would make her escape as soon as practicable, and so he should ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... I do," was the girl's swift retort. "But there," as a horrified exclamation came from the bed, "he won't ask me, auntie," the girl went on, with a dash of angry impatience in her voice, "so you needn't worry. Seth has a sense of honor which I call quixotic, and one that might reasonably shame the impecunious fortune-hunters I've met since I have lived in England. No, I'm afraid if I were to marry Seth it wouldn't be ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... reality thinking of her at all, but her conscience pricked her, though her pride kept her silent. It was such an unheard-of course for a person in her station, that none but fanatics could expect her to take it. Quixotic, irrational, eccentric, visionary, were words that flitted incoherently through her brain; but her tongue refused to utter them. Was Christ then so prudent, so cautious, so anxious to secure innocent indulgences and to grasp worldly ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... mix-up such as this is. I can't afford to dump all my future overboard and kill myself for the next legislature by an absolutely useless and quixotic splurge in to-day's convention. The General has made no canvass—he isn't even very much interested personally in the affair. I hope I stand straight with you now. I'm going up and tell the General exactly how I feel about the thing. I advise you to do the same. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... stated to old Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, but that formidable lady belonged to an earlier generation, and saw no reason for Quixotic behaviour. Her conscience had been trained in the eighteenth century, and all her blame was for Rosina Wheeler. Torn between his duty and his filial affection, Bulwer-Lytton now passed through a period of moral agony. He wrote to his ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... 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 ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... his spectacles, breathed on them, and rubbed them, while he regarded my father with a bewildered air. "You'll excuse me . . . but I must own myself entirely puzzled. Even for a friend's sake, as I was about to protest, your conduct, sir, would be Quixotic; yes, yes, Quixotic in the highest degree, the amount being (as you might say) princely, and the security—" Mr. Knox paused and expressed his opinion of the security by a pitying smile. "But if," he resumed, "this man be not even your friend, ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... fortune. At least it was to Beulah that she owed the initial inspiration that set the wheel of that fortune in motion; but it was to the glorious enterprise and idealism of youth, and the courage of a set of the most intrepid and quixotic convictions that ever quickened in the breasts of a mad half dozen youngsters, that she owed the ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... ship, and probably its master also, for some other less worthy adventurer on the sea. For that very reason I have come to set you right. It may be that I have my quixotic moments. At any rate, I have a fancy to give you a gentleman's chance. Monsieur, I regret the necessity of being inhospitable, but I am forced to say that you must quit the shelter of this yacht within ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... returned Mr. Bayard, who had already half solved the enigma of Mr. Gwynn. "I begin to fear that you are a quixotic, not to say an eccentric, not to add a most egotistical young man. At that I'm not prepared to say you are wrong. One is justified in extreme concealments to avoid those ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... me. Could there be anything in what he said? If it was true that Jasper Titus contemplated such a quixotic move, there could be but one compelling force behind the whim: sentiment. But not sentiment on ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... reforming its antiquated spelling must sooner or later arise; and we must form some clear notion whether any thing can be done to remove or alleviate a complaint inherent in the very life of language. If my friends tell me that the idea of a reform of spelling is entirely Quixotic, that it is a mere waste of time to try to influence a whole nation to surrender its historical orthography and to write phonetically, I bow to their superior wisdom as men of the world. But as I am not a man of the world, but rather an observer of the world, my interest in the subject, my ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... promised the girl! Stronger than his curiosity, stronger almost than his wish to deliver the papers, was his desire to keep that promise. It may have been foolish, quixotic; but he resolved to continue as he had begun. "At ten o'clock," he said to himself, "if I have not found her, I will look at the papers or go to the police—do whatever is necessary." He did not like to ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... 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 ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... Rome; the Imperial Government had sent one of its periodical intimations, that the French occupation could not be prolonged indefinitely; and General De La Moriciere had assumed the command of the Papal army, on his ill-fated and Quixotic crusade. At such a time it was deemed necessary to show Europe, that the Pope still reigned in the hearts of his people, and every effort was made to secure a demonstration. Government clerks and official personages received orders to be present at the ceremony; and all persons, over whom the Priests ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... aroused Quixotic sentiment he was sick with horror. He knew that what Krevin Crood had told at last was true. He knew, too, that it would never have come out if Krevin himself had not been in danger. A feeling of ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... quebrantar to break. quedar(se) to stay, remain; —— en algo to abide by something. quehacer m. business, duty. queja lament. quejar vr. to complain. quemar to burn. querellante plaintiff. querer to wish, love. quien, quien who, whom, which. quijotesco Quixotic. quimerico chimerical, extravagant. quince fifteen. quinientos, -as five hundred. quinta conscription. quinto conscript. quitar to take away, ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... very abominable on the part of these Jacksons," Mr. Renfrew said, "but your interference was most imprudent, my young friend; and, as you see, it has done harm rather than good. If you are so quixotic as to become the champion of every ill-treated slave in the State, your work is pretty ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... finance to secure that the impudence of financial independence should be properly checked; and so it happened that although 5,000,000 pounds was secured after an intense struggle, it was soon plain that the large requirements of a derelict government could not be satisfied in this Quixotic manner. Two important points had, however, been attained; first, China was kept financially afloat during the year 1912 by the independence of a single member of the London Stock Exchange; secondly, using this coup as a lever the Peking Government secured better ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... 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
... this ought to be looked at first and foremost from the man's point of view. The truth is, Theo, that you have simply appealed to me in the hope of having your own Quixotic notion confirmed. You want me to say, 'Yes, go; you will be doing quite right.' And—think what you will of me—I ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... make his happiness complete—namely, a grandson with unmistakably red hair. A shrewd man of business, Mr. Baker tied up every farthing of his daughter's fortune, L30,000; and this was well, for Burton's father, a rather Quixotic gentleman, had but a child's notion of the use of money. The Burtons resided at Torquay, and Colonel Burton busied himself chiefly in making chemical experiments, of which he was remarkably fond; ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... 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 ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... 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 ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... 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
... had been the strangest contrast to the calm countenance which I saw so tranquilly listen to its own tale. It was Quixotic, and two hundred years ago could scarcely have escaped the pen of some French Cervantes. He had begun life as an officer in the French household troops in absolute boyhood. At sixteen he had married! at eighteen he had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... her loving and longing thoughts. No, no, Cardo; you have nothing to pull such a long face about. On the contrary, as I have said before, you are a lucky dog." (Cardo grunted.) "Besides, you are not obliged to go. It seems to me rather a quixotic affair altogether, and yet, by Jove! there is something in it that appeals to the poetic side of my nature. You will earn your father's undying gratitude, and in the first gush of his happiness you will gain his consent to your ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... class to make louder and more fussy professions of virtue and religion than other people. In fact, it is a downright insult to the dramatic profession to exact or to expect any such thing. Equally objectionable, and equally impracticable, are the attempts of Quixotic "dramatic reformers" to exercise a sort of goody-goody censorship over the selection and the text of the plays to be acted. The stage has been serving the world for hundreds, yes, and thousands of ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... before, and my life had been singularly loveless. I had fought a lonely battle always. Once before, in college, we had both laid ourselves and our callow devotions at the feet of the same girl. Her name was Dorothy—I had forgotten the rest—but I remembered the sequel. In a spirit of quixotic youth I had relinquished my claim in favor of Richey and had gone cheerfully on my way, elevated by my heroic sacrifice to a somber, white-hot martyrdom. As is often the case, McKnight's first words showed our parallel lines ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sensitive on the subject of women. He cannot bear flippant allusions to the sex. He has preserved a childlike faith in their purity, their sacred mission on earth, their refining influence upon the race. His friends call him old-fashioned and quixotic on this point. A true woman, he declares, can do no wrong. And this same man, towards the end of the book, watches how the truest woman in the place, the one whom he admires more than all the rest, his own cousin and a mother, calmly throws her legitimate husband over a cliff. He realises ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... swarthiness of Perfidion's cheeks. "Mallory, you know as well as I do that the Grail never really existed, that it was nothing more than the mead-inspired daydream of a bunch of quixotic knights. So go and get your hair cut and ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... 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 than ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... were no such things as "trifles" in the daily life of Trigger Island. The smallest incident took on the importance of an event, the slightest departure from the ordinary at once became significant. In other circumstances, these people would have been vastly amused by the quixotic settlement of the affairs of Joe and Matilda; they would have grinned over the extraordinary decree of Justice Malone, and they would have taken it all with an indulgent wink. As a matter of fact, they were stern-faced and intense. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... the very moment of triumph, quixotic as such scruples may seem to some, Ventimore's conscience smote him. He could not help a certain pity for the old creature, who was shaking there convulsively prepared to re-enter his bottle-prison rather than incur a wholly imaginary doom. Fakrash had aged visibly within the last hour; now he ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... 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 ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... set her against him, had felt this seductive quality in Olga's lover, 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 ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... 'to pandar' and 'pandarism'. 'Rodomontade' is from Rodomont, a blustering and boasting hero of Boiardo, adopted by Ariosto; 'thrasonical', from Thraso, the braggart of the Roman comedy. Cervantes has given us 'quixotic'; Swift 'lilliputian'; to Moliere the French language owes 'tartuffe' and 'tartufferie'. 'Reynard' too, which with us is a duplicate for fox, while in the French 'renard' has quite excluded the older 'volpils', was originally not the name ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... Clapperton and his friends, carried the thing a step further, and insisted on equal rights with their rivals in all the School institutions. To their surprise they found an ally in Yorke, who, as we have already said, hurt the feelings of many of his admirers by his Quixotic insistence on fair ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... a robbery 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
... are very Quixotic, Hector," said Laura McIntyre. "Why should you not accept it in the spirit in which it was meant? You did this stranger a service—perhaps a greater service than you know of—and he meant this as a little memento of the occasion. I do not see that there ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... regions capable of 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 with armies of reprobate ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... nationality, could discern quite marvelously the weaknesses of others, and his own, and was extremely skilful in playing upon them, so that he had no difficulty in gaining an ascendancy over Canet. It amused him to drag this Sancho Panza into Quixotic pranks. He made no scruple about using him, disposing of his will, his time, his money,—not for his own benefit, (he needed none, though no one knew how or in what way he lived),—but in the most compromising demonstrations of the cause. Canet submitted to it all: he tried to persuade himself ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... ever been heard of the tragedy mentioned by Dr. Farr; it was probably never completed. The same gentleman speaks of a strange Quixotic scheme which Goldsmith had in contemplation at the time, "of going to decipher the inscriptions on the written mountains," though he was altogether ignorant of Arabic, or the language in which they ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... until later that the real joke lay in the fact that Larry was English-born, and that his devotion to Ireland was purely sentimental and quixotic. His family had, to be sure, come out of Ireland some time in the dim past, and settled in England; but when Larry reached years of knowledge, if not of discretion, he cut Oxford and insisted on taking his degree at Dublin. He even believed,—or thought ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... asked. "Will you give your moral principles a vacation and take Rod's message to Rose, even though you may think it's Quixotic nonsense?" ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the decimation of his followers by disease. Even as an example these expeditions were all but fruitless. Yet, when the worst has been said of the Crusades and those who led them, there are moments in the quixotic career of St. Louis which haunt the fancy and compel our admiration: his bearing when, a captive of the Egyptian Sultan, he refused, even under threats of torture, to barter a single Christian fortress for his freedom; his lonely watch in Palestine, when for three years he patiently awaited the ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... dominant voice. And even in her Garden of Paradise she had heard it. And even from her Garden of Paradise she had obeyed it. For the first time she saw that act of renunciation as the average man or woman would probably see it; as an extraordinary, quixotic act, to be wondered at blankly, or, perhaps, to be almost angrily condemned. She stood away from her own impulsive, enthusiastic nature, and stared at it critically—as even her friends had often stared—and realized that it was unusual, perhaps extravagant, perhaps ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... to pursue this Quixotic quest will find the literature abundant and very interesting. For example, such essays as that by F.W. Brockbank in Manchester Association for Research, vol. i, 1909-10; and another by A.F.A. ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... of the Australians in France I always think of a windmill. This is not implying that they were in any sense Quixotic or that they tilted at a windmill, there being nothing left of the windmill to tilt at when their capture of its ruins became the crowning labor of their first tour ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... 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 if no one ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... deal of hard winking and adroit management on the part of his instructors to bring him through without infringement of college laws and proprieties: not that he ever meant the least harm in his life, but that some extra generous impulse, some quixotic generosity, was always tumbling him, neck and heels, into somebody's scrapes, and making him part and parcel in every piece of mischief that ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the 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 such stories may do good ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and shrugged. He knew the type with which he had to deal. Quixotic and generous to the verge of folly, the type that will sacrifice itself without reserve for an illusion, an ideal; the type that filled monasteries, and Siberian prisons, and made a jest for half the world. Such men were valuable to the Cause, because they gave ungrudgingly, and ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... you to own up to it. If every boy in the school was as honest as you, Newall, we should soon find out who was the culprit who went to my desk. Moncrief was guilty of a Quixotic act of disobedience, as it turns out, and I think, in the circumstances he has been sufficiently punished. It is due to ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... an altered tone, "but I must say I can see no reason for such a quixotic proceeding on your part; I never supposed you and ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... seen 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 ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... in especial by this generation of idealists, whose flags rise and go down, whose battle line wavers and breaks a thousand times? What is the high quixotic splendid call? We know of a group of public-spirited people who advocate, in endowed films, "safety first," another that champions total abstinence. Often their work seems lost in the mass of commercial production, but it is a good beginning. Such ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... be understood 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 Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he walked back to his lodgings in Thirty-second Street. Wild, Quixotic notions of sacrifice flooded his mood of dejection. If the worst came, he could go West with the family and learn how to do something. And yet—Mrs. Wybert. Of course it must be that. The other idea was absurd—too wild for serious consideration. He was thirty ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... she said at last. 'You are so chivalrous and unselfish. You're quixotic. It's that that is troubling me. Are you marrying me just because you're sorry for me? Don't speak. I can tell you now if you will just let me say straight out what's in my mind. We have known each other for two years now. You know all about ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... him of her new-found knowledge, and at once he had filled in and coloured the sketchy outlines of the picture drawn by the rather foolish if kindly natured Miss Weatherfield. Yes, it was true that he had been a fool, though a quixotic fool—so Blanche had felt on hearing his version of the story. At the time of the marriage Varick had been nineteen, his wife five years older. The two had soon parted, but they had made up their differences ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... 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 ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... tiger that crouches by a pool for hours waiting for a kill; so, somewhat reluctantly, he let the opportunity pass. While he considered Barlow to be an Englishman possessed of rather slow perception, he knew that the Captain had a quixotic sense of honour, and possibly such a ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... to draw you away from all your friends at a moment's warning! I would remonstrate—I would not go; I would exert a proper spirit, and force him to abandon this Quixotic expedition." ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... York, try my chance there for work, and at least see the city, which I had never seen, and get my cyclopaedia and magazine. It was the least offer the Public ever made to me; but just then the Public was in a collapse, and the least was better than nothing. The plan of so long a journey was Quixotic enough, and I hesitated about it a good deal. Finally I came to this resolve: I would start in the morning to walk to the lock-station at Brockport on the canal. If a boat passed that night where they would give me my fare ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... impressed him with the necessity of preserving his health and strength, as an essential to success, he will be slow to yield to any temptation that may interfere with his plans. This reasoning may sound quixotic to some people, but it is the truth. Many a boy has been inspired to success by the knowledge that his mother or father believed in him, and was confident he would be a leader. He strove to justify the pride and confidence of those who held him ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... ideas." She raised her eyes sometimes and looked at him as he sat there. His shabby, hapless appearance always appealed to her. She knew that he was, in reality, anything but hapless, but his clothes never fitted him, and it was impossible for him to escape from the Quixotic embarrassments of his thin hair, his high cheek-bones, his large spectacles. His smile, however, gave him his character; when he smiled—and he was always smiling—you saw a man independent, proud, wise and gentle. He was not a fool, Mr. Magnus, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... 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 ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... name you show, In vain for intellect are noted, Blue blood and brains, you surely know, At nominal amounts are quoted; And then, I see, you're weak enough To offer "love, sincere, unstudied,"— Why, Sir, with such Quixotic ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... Obviously pleasure either of the frivolous or of the spectacular kind attracts the greatest number of customers to his emporium. It is consequently pleasure of this spectacular or frivolous kind which he habitually endeavours to provide. It is Quixotic to anticipate much diminution in the supply and demand of either frivolity or spectacle, both of which may furnish quite innocuous pleasure. But each is the antithesis of dramatic art; and whatever view one holds of the methods of the American capitalist, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... lies in those characteristics which Kingsley himself admitted would appear to the average reader. "The plot is extravagant as well as ill-woven, and broken, besides, by episodes as extravagant as itself. The morality is quixotic, and practically impossible. The sermonizing, whether theological or social, is equally clumsy and obtrusive. Without artistic method, without knowledge of human nature and the real world, the book can never have touched many hearts and can ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... minute—did we remain thus. It seemed a 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
... families, the principal representatives of the community's wealth and culture, definitely abandoned the country, some immediately upon the advent of the Haitians, others in 1824, when a hopeless conspiracy in favor of a restoration of Spanish rule was quenched in blood, and others in 1830, when a quixotic demand of the Spanish king for a return of his domain was refused by Boyer. The Haitians, anxious to eliminate the whites, encouraged such emigration and confiscated the property left by the emigrants. The policy of the Haitian government was to build up a strong African state in the ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... seemed inevitable. How was 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 been ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... good Men become almost an infamous appelation"; and, accordingly, the first number of his new paper discloses Sir Alexander in full crusade against these Grub-Street writers. But that he soon perceived the quixotic impolicy of such a campaign, appears very clearly, as early as the fifth number of the Journal:—"when Hercules undertook to cleanse the Stables of Augeas (a Work not much unlike my present Undertaking) should any little clod of Dirt more filthy perhaps than all the ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... urgent in upholding Peytel's contention that his crime had been homicide, not murder, and brought forward the plea of "no premeditation." His energetic efforts were of no avail: Peytel was executed at Bourg on November 28th, 1839, and Balzac, who had espoused his cause with quixotic enthusiasm, was genuinely sorry. He wrote to Madame Hanska in September: "I am extremely agitated by a horrible case, the case of Peytel. I have seen this poor fellow three times. He is condemned; I start in two ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... peace, these latter frequented the courts of the Moorish princes, and mingled with their adversaries in the comparatively peaceful pleasures of the tourney, as in war they vied with them in feats of Quixotic gallantry. [20] ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... bounty—one by driving a natty cart and delivering hot morning rolls, and another by pilfering firewood for the furnace—the account (if one had been made) was far from even. But to any objection to this Quixotic generosity Silver Tongue had a reply ever ready on his lips. "I lofe dem like my fader," he would say in his deep, fluty voice, and the conversation was seldom carried further. When it was—by some one ill advised enough to do so—Silver Tongue would flare ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... 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 by such ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... the incidents of the rehearsal affected us like a magic-lantern show of peculiarly enlivening character, at which we looked on like merry children. Hans, who was in an equally happy mood—for we all seemed to each other to be embarked on some Quixotic adventure—called my attention to Brendel, who was sitting not far from us, and seemed to be expecting me to recognise him. I found it entertaining to prolong this suspense thus occasioned, by pretending not to know him, whereat, as it appears, the poor man was much offended. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... current in Rome were finding their open verification in the senate. A vigorous championship of the cause of right from the foremost politician of the day, might not influence the decision of the House, and would certainly not lead to a quixotic policy of armed intervention; but it might prove to critics of the government that the inevitable decision had not been reached wholly in defiance of the claims of the suppliant and wholly in obedience to the machinations of a usurper. The decision, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge |
