"Quixotic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the York hussars, in defence of whose whiskers he sometime since made a Quixotic attack upon a public writer. As he is full six feet high, and we are not quite five, prudence bids us place ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... her before that evening, I believe. The father was one of the Jervaises' tenants.... A superior kind of young woman in some ways, I've heard; and a friend of the youngest Jervaise girl ... you wouldn't remember her ... she went with her friend to Australia or somewhere ... some quixotic idea of protecting her, I believe ... and married out there. The farmer's name was Baggs. The whole family were a trifle queer, and emigrated afterwards ... yes, it was a pity about Melhuish, in a way. He was considered quite a promising young dramatist. This thing of his ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... a typical business man of the present day, is not conscious of any such feeling. If by chance, an idea of this kind did creep into his head, he would dismiss it as quixotic, not practical. He believes that "business is business." If you ask him whether Shylock was right and justified in demanding his pound of flesh, he might hesitate a moment, but after thinking it ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... through, and as she was folding it stopped; it occurred to her that he might think courtesy demanded a formal refusal of his proposal. It was, of course, quite unnecessary; the refusal went without saying; she would no more have dreamed of accepting his quixotic offer than he would have dreamed of avoiding the necessity of making it; the one was as much a sine qua non to her as the other was to him. From which it would appear that in some ways at least their notions of honour were not so ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... the whole, can do justice to it. Seldom before has art in any guise placed the grand, heroic, self-devoting purpose of a grand, heroic, self-devoting nature more impressively before us than in the Gypsy chief. It is easy to think and speak of such an enterprise as Quixotic and impossible. There is a stage in every great enterprise humanity has ever undertaken when it might be so characterised: and the greatest of all enterprises, when an obscure Jew stood forth to become light and life, not to a tribe or a race, but to ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... usual. 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 prisoner last month; the Rebel would not shake hands with him. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... 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 ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... beneath the great fair mustache. In Russia the men have good eyes—blue, fierce, intelligent. Such eyes had the son of the Princess Alexis. There was something in Etta Bamborough that stirred up within him a quality which men are slowly losing—namely, chivalry. Steinmetz held that this man was quixotic, and what Steinmetz said was usually worth some small attention. Whatever faults that poor knight of La Mancha who has been the laughing-stock of the world these many centuries—whatever faults or foolishness may have been his, he was at all ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... instead of more. Had the boy's purpose been to mystify me, he could scarce have done better. I think that he had no such intention, for it would have been wholly unlike him; but I saw no sign in it that I had really helped him, had really shaken his old quixotic resolve, nor did I see any of his having found a new way of his own out of the trap. I could not believe that the dark road of escape had taken any lodgement in his thought, but had only passed over it, like a cloud with a heavy shadow. But these ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... taste; but that London has plenty of people who can appreciate it may be seen by the way in which Mr. LORAINE can hold the great auditorium under the spell of its romance. Without an effort he endears to us the defects of his hero's Quixotic qualities, and makes his very deformity contribute to the triumph of his heroic panache. Even such of the poet's prolixities as survive a very careful pruning of the text are made to seem essential to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... relation with Godelinette from its inception, and had not disapproved. On his visits to Paris he had dined with them, given them dinners, and treated her with the utmost complaisance. But when, one fine morning, her tailor died, and my quixotic friend announced his intention of marrying her, dans les delais legaux, the squire protested. I think I read the whole correspondence, and I remember that in the beginning the elder man took the tone ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... told me has interested me so much, and the lad himself has made such a favourable impression upon me, that I believe I shall really feel more than half-inclined to undertake the somewhat Quixotic task of seeking his relatives myself when we reach England. Who knows but that it might be my good fortune to gladden the heart of a father or mother whose life has been embittered for years by the loss of perhaps an only ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... foolish, 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
... me for any Quixotic idea, I'll marry the first man that proposes to me," said Betty, lightly. "I am too happy to even consider such a possibility. There are no to-morrows when to-day is flawless— Hark! ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... Rubempre, whom he loves with an intense devotion, and would exploit as a power and influence in the social, literary and political world. The deep-dyed criminal seems to live a life of pleasure, fashion and social rank in the person of this protege. The abnormal, and in some degree quixotic, nature of this attachment is a purely Balzacian conception, and the contradictions involved in this character, with all the intellectual and physical endowments which pertain to it, are sometimes such as to bring the sublime in perilous proximity to the ridiculous. How such a fantastic creation ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... this uncomfortable letter arrived, in the person of Monsieur Lablache, the French master. It would be difficult to say what there was in the unpopular foreigner which attracted the Master of the Shell. It may have been a touch of Quixotic chivalry which led him to defy all the traditions of the place and offer his friendship to the best-hated person in Grandcourt; or it may have been a feeling that monsieur was hardly judged by his colleagues and pupils. However it was, during ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... appeared demented. Fortunately, the interesting barouche had passed before the catastrophe, and covered as I was with dust, and my hat blocked, you may be sure I did not care to present myself before the object of my Quixotic devotion. ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Carstairs spoke warmly—"this is all very well, very Quixotic, very—well, what you call noble, chivalrous—but what about the moral side of the affair? Justice should be tempered with mercy, certainly; but it doesn't do to defraud justice altogether of her dues. The woman has committed ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... to come, I suppose,' she said to herself. 'Mamma seems almost as impulsive and quixotic as Frances—quite bewitched by these people. But at worst there's nothing more to tell now, and Lady Myrtle appreciates my feelings if ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... facts of his marriage, and the criticism of his wife, had another effect on Jackson which in time became important to the whole country. Through that experience his chivalrous feeling for women was developed into a quixotic readiness to be the champion of any woman whom he found distressed ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown
... fair way to be requited, and I had already made up my mind to leave it at that. I have merely kept up the game to this point out of curiosity to see how far your—shall we say knight-errantry?—would lead you. I will now relieve you from the necessity of going through an act of Quixotic folly which would assuredly, sooner or later, have unpleasant consequences ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... "Very quixotic, but quite useless," said he; and then set himself to dissuade me from my quest with every argument that he could bring to bear upon me. Some of these, indeed, I thought he ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... great doubt in his mind was echoed in that of every man present: what would be the outcome of Ivan's audacity? If Brodsky took the remonstrance in bad part—and who doubted that he would?—what would be the fate of Gregoriev? Poor fellow! He had undertaken a quixotic task; and more than one of his fellow-officers regretted that they had not had the generosity to warn him of what he certainly should himself have ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... myself from the embrace as soon as I could. I didn't feel like the best man in the world. I felt like a Quixotic fool. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... had come home on a quixotic and more or less unbusinesslike mission. It had long been the belief of Consolidated Pemmican's chemists that the Grass might possibly furnish raw material for food concentrates and we had come to modify our opinion about the necessity for a processing plant in close ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... here; go ahead, pull whatever stunt is up your sleeve. I give you my word that if you see Leyden and feel as you do about him then, we'll hold back our own vessel until he's under weigh, no matter what we lose by it. Does that soothe your blessed Quixotic scruples?" ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... still more easy to justify the Russian war. A Quixotic love of the marvellous was no longer supposed to be the passion which excited it. In making war against Russia, he was actuated by the desire of avenging the injuries which that power had occasioned to France, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... of one century can become the honour of the next. I am inclined to believe just the opposite. I believe that the man who has so sensitive a conscience about what is honourable or not, that he is called a Quixotic fool by his contemporaries, is far more likely to be right than the coarser majority who only see that a certain course is expedient. I should believe that he saw some truth of morality clearly which the rougher sort of minds did not see. The saint—call ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... bookcase (fifty shillings), and a perfect stack of cushions (at prices varying from half-a-crown to three shillings and elevenpence-three-farthings, or, in technical terminology, "three-and-eleven-three.") The man became infected with the quixotic spirit of the affair and revealed himself in his true colours as a hierophant of the higher mysteries. Producing secret keys, he exhibited those arcana, of the inner rooms which apparently are not for sale but which are kept solely for the purpose of dazzling the ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... to provide him with money when he needed it. So, if Haig had seemed too aggressive and selfish in his methods, all that he had done had been done in a spirit of—he might say a spirit that was almost quixotic. And having done all this, increasing Thursby's holdings of cattle four times, Haig refused to accept anything for his time and labor, and insisted that their account ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... step you take with 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 marriage ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... There 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. They had ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... Life's 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 get In one ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... trivial incidents in this great war—the all-absorbing drama of Christendom—were it not that they were for the moment the whole war. It might be thought that hostilities were approaching their natural termination, and that the war was dying of extreme old age, when the Quixotic pranks of a Du Terrail occupied so large a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... not 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
... of meeting again could bridge the chasm. All 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
... 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 should ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... not pay, and John Halifax will not go to law to make him. Nay, father dear, I am not going to quarrel with any one of your crotchets." She spoke with a fond pride, as she did always, even when arguing against the too Quixotic carrying out of the said crotchets. "Perhaps, as the reward of forbearance, the money will come some day when we least expect it; then John shall have his heart's desire, and ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Quixotic. A Prime Minister is of all men bound to follow the traditions of his country, or, when he leaves them, to leave them with ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... their 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, although ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... most of the starch out of Mr. Heard. But his acquaintance with some of the saddest and wildest aspects of womanhood only deepened his conviction of the sanctity of the sex. Some called him old-fashioned or quixotic, because he was not altogether in sympathy with modern feministic movements; they called him an idealist, because he had preserved his belief in the sacred mission of women upon earth—his childlike faith in the purity of their souls. They were a humanizing influence, the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... with the secret of his disaster, Bradley was a frequent and welcome visitor to Oldenhurst. Apart from his strange and chivalrous friendship for the Mainwarings—which was as incomprehensible to Sir Robert as Sir Robert's equally eccentric and Quixotic speculations had been to Bradley—he began to feel a singular and weird fascination for the place. A patient martyr in the vast London house he had taken for his wife and cousin's amusement, he loved to escape ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... do not know about that; but the mother and son have taken a farm there lately, trying to make shift for themselves, poor things! They say young Hollingford has some Quixotic ideas about paying some of his father's liabilities; and if he has, I am sure it is very creditable to him. But I for one am inclined to doubt it. Bad conduct generally runs ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... a circular riot, which leads to l'Ete. The ladies then join hands, and endeavour to imitate the graceful evolutions of a windmill, occasionally grinding the corns of their partners, who frantically rush in with the quixotic intention of stopping them. A general shuffling about then takes place, which terminates in a bow, a bob, and "allow me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... his person, 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 of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... much stock in this idea of women nurses, especially when they're young and pretty." He scowled at Rachel as if she had committed a crime in being young and beautiful. "But the country's full of women with a Quixotic notion of being Florence Nightingales, and they've badgered the Government into accepting their services. I suppose I'll have to take my share ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... married at 19 Harriet Westbrook, a pretty girl of 16, a school companion of his sister, from whom he was separated within three years; under the influence of WILLIAM GODWIN (q. v.) his revolutionary ideas of politics and society developed apace; engaged in quixotic political enterprises in Dublin, Lynmouth, and elsewhere, and above all put to practical test Godwin's heterodox view on marriage by eloping (1814) to the Continent with his daughter Mary, whom he married two years ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... himself in that lofty sarcophagus in Gable Inn, resolved only to claim her, though she was all his own already, when he had reinstated his fortunes by his labour. That was noble also, perhaps, but in her own heart she thought it a trifle foolish—say Quixotic, not to be too severe. She would rather have seen his ardour find a more commonplace expression. She had a general sort of belief that whatever Philip did was bound to be right, and yet this actual experience rather ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... do. She wears a dinky miniature of you against her naked heart. Yes, I guess I understand.... And I guess she's that kind of a girl all unselfishness and innocence, and generous perversity and—quixotic love.... It's too bad, Louis. I guess you're up against it ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... virtues of St. Eloi was that of a consistent carrying out of his real beliefs and theories, whether men might consider him quixotic or not. He was strongly opposed to the institution of slavery. In those days it would have been futile to preach actual emancipation. The times were not ripe. But St. Eloi did all that he could for the cause of freedom by investing most of his money ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... honourable of 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
... at least. Ned seems worried. Things don't go smoothly in the new Works, and he has such high-flown ideas. It seems to me he makes troubles, by expecting every one else to be as quixotic as himself. He is not likely to find high-flown notions among ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... departing from him, as he thinks it must necessarily depart from all intelligent male Parisians, he wept. Since that moment, however, a gaiety, serene and imperturbable, has been the mainstay of his happily constituted character. The girl to whom his uncle desires to see him united—odd, quixotic, intelligent, with a sort of pathetic and delicate grace, and herself very religious—belongs to an old-fashioned, devout family,. resident at Varaville, near by. M. Feuillet, with half a dozen fine touches of his admirable ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... 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 formed his political ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... to the momentary impulse that bade him hasten to the booking office and secure a ticket for St. Moritz forthwith. He dismissed the notion as quixotic and unnecessary. Bower's attitude in not pressing his company on Miss Wynton at this initial stage of the journey revealed a subtlety that demanded equal restraint on Spencer's part. Helen herself was so far from suspecting the truth that Bower would be compelled to keep up ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... looking after her. All her quixotic notions of honour would eventually yield to argument—of course they would. Yet his heart strangely misgave him as he read ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... out at last. Yet Dick was aware that he might very easily have guessed it. This was just the quixotic line his father could ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... who wish 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. Woodford, A. Q. C., i, 28. Better ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... Pandarus that shameful ministry out of which his name has past into the words '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 of a kind, but the proper name of the fox-hero, the ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... going to stand by and see them vexed, far less punished; and I authorise you to give me up for trial if you think that best—or, if you think it unnecessary, in the meanwhile to make preparations for their defence. I hope, sir, that I am as little anxious to be Quixotic, as I ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if quixotic, resolve, Henry Cecil strapped a knapsack on his back, and, staff in hand, tramped off in search of the "beggar-maid" who was to bring him happiness at last; or, if he could not discover her, at least to find ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... a season of peace on earth," he had told himself, while demolishing the logs of a sinister deadfall with his axe; and now the remembrance of his quixotic deed added a brightness to the fire and to the rough, undecorated walls of ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... interviewer, or are at all shy and retiring, as a matter of delicacy, about their family affairs; on the contrary, they display a striking lack of reticence in their native element, and are so far from pushing parental affection to a quixotic extreme that many of them, like the common rabbit immortalised by Mr. Squeers, 'frequently devour their own offspring.' But nature herself opposes certain obvious obstacles to the pursuit of knowledge in the great deep, which render it difficult for ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Freddy?" she 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
... sometimes win. We must encourage men to venture, to take chances; only so can the great evils that ride mankind be banished. If there is a fighting chance of accomplishing a great good it is contemptible not to try; society must maintain a code that leads at times to quixotic acts. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... Felix suddenly, "there is some one following us; he is coming at a quick pace, as if trying to overtake us. Perhaps it is your quixotic adventurer ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... expectation altogether Quixotic. In the train of many Polynesian princes roving whites are frequently found: gentleman pensioners of state, basking in the tropical sunshine of the court, and leading the pleasantest lives in the world. Upon islands little visited by foreigners ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... Ketosh village had greatly reduced our food supplies for the porters, and there was only enough left to last six days. In that time we should have to ascend the mountain and descend to some place where food supplies could be procured. It all looked quite quixotic. We bought two bullocks, a sheep, and a goat, and, with our guides ahead, our entire safari of over a hundred souls turned toward the grim heights that shot up ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... 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
... afraid Eric Marshall will never do one quixotic thing," said a Queenslea professor, who had a habit of uttering rather mysterious epigrams, "but if he ever does it will supply the one thing lacking ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had really had some thoughts of owning, somewhere about this point, that he had lost his head; but when it came to the point he saw that this admission was unnecessarily quixotic, and that he would be far safer if he suggested that Elise had lost hers. In fact, it was Fanny who had suggested it in the first place. It might not be altogether a fair imputation, but, hang it all, it was the only one ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... 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, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... arrived, Colonel C—-'s family were at breakfast, of which they made us partake; and after vainly endeavouring to dissuade us from what appeared to them our Quixotic expedition, Mrs. C—- added a dozen fine white fish to the contents of the sack, and sent her youngest son to help Mr. T—- along with his burthen, and to bear us company on our ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... 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
... aspect of this tragedy; but there was a singular fact which added to its intensity and bitterness. In such a hot-bed of secession as was Delisleville, the fact in question was indeed not easily explainable, except upon the grounds either of a Quixotic patriotism or upon those of a general disposition to contradictoriness. A Southern man, the head of a Southern family, the Judge opposed the rebellion and openly sided with the Government. That he had been a man given to argument ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... monarch so ordered affairs that the conditions under his edict were kept in force for many days. He proposed to give a thorough test to his quixotic ideas. The portion of the workmen was hard manual labor by day in the upper regions of air and light, and by night the relaxation of enervating luxury; and the portion of the brokers was deep dejection, deep curses, ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... We are told, on one page, to do as we please; and on the next we are 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 ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him, eclipsing him more or less during this transit. As, on the other hand, the eclipses would be our only means of determining the existence of these unknown planets (save indeed from perturbation, as in the case of Sirius and Procyon), it might have seemed quixotic to hope for like conditions in order to discover solar systems other than our own. But these exceptional circumstances have reproduced themselves at ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... believe the author of Typhoon subtle enough for that, or for anything else, and I have this only grudge against him, that he intrigued me to the point of feverishly "skipping," out of sheer excitement to know if and how the deplorable misunderstanding between Flora and her quixotic Captain Anthony was to be cleared up, just like any ordinary decent library-subscriber, instead of the case-hardened critical fellow I naturally ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... she managed to win Vandervelde's interest and sympathy. That she had won young Peter Champneys's didn't surprise him. He was glad that she had had that one disinterested and kindly deed to look back to. The boy's quixotic behavior brought a smile to the lawyer's lips. Fancy his wishing to send such a girl to his uncle and being sure that old Chadwick wouldn't misunderstand! Gracie cast a new light upon Peter Champneys, and a very likable one. Vandervelde had ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... read over her ancient Quaker laws, or count up the nefarious gains their slave-trading fathers made, while enjoying the twenty years lease of the African slave trade, granted by the Federal Constitution. Ridicule as we may the family pride or State pride of Virginia, or the sometimes Quixotic chivalry of her sons, they have reason to be proud of their noble mother, for her great names belong to American fame, and her history is our nation's glory. In view of all the past, I hope that day may never come when Virginia shall ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... 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, remove. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... interrupted Bethune, "you will not let such Quixotic ideals stand between us and happiness! You have your right to happiness, and so have I, and in the end 'twill be the same, your father's name will be cleared ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... again the spell of Brown's imperious will. He had thought the old man's chief reason for selecting Harper's Ferry as the scene was his quixotic desire to be dramatic. He knew the history of the village. It had been named for Robert Harper, an Englishman. Lord Fairfax, the friend of George Washington, had given the millwright a grant of it in 1748. Washington, himself, had made the first survey ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... me quixotic notions with regard to the duties of men and women of culture, or think that I undervalue the difficulties in the way, the fastidiousness on the one side, or the jealousies on the other. It is by no means easy to an active participant to define ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the time for quixotic foolishness. Do you not understand that Sir Guy hath sent word to General Washington that he will investigate further? General Washington does not want that. He wants Lippencott, or, failing him, a victim. He will wait only so long as it takes Sir Guy's letter ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... she had argued, with flashing eyes: "I am without a shilling of my own, owing to the Quixotic ideas of my husband, who, without thinking of me, has beggared himself to pay his father's debts. And that, too, just when I need to be comforted most. He does not care how I suffer; and now that my father has offered me a home, ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... temptations, more true in their emotions, more generous in their affections, more unerring and unstained than men. He extended to them all the reverent tenderness with which he regarded his mothers memory. In this he saw nothing quixotic; to him the most hoydenish girl was a potential mother, whose body possessed a sacredness quite apart from herself as a slim, adventurous ark which would bear the future of the race across the deluge of the ages. He knew, as a matter of fact, that ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... by his own children, only Browning's generosity kept Landor from actual want. At Rugby, and at Oxford, his extreme Republicanism brought him into constant trouble; and his fitting out a band of volunteers to assist the Spaniards against Napoleon, in 1808, allies him with Byron and his Quixotic followers. The resemblance to Byron is even more strikingly shown in the poem Gebir, published in 1798, a year made famous by the Lyrical ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... simply a Quixotic idea you have gotten into your head that you should go back to the mountains and spend your life trying to help your people," ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... my own good. It went decidedly against the grain with me to requite Richards' hospitality and friendship by claiming back the money I had lent him, and for which he no doubt had good use. At the same time, it would have been rather Quixotic to let my own plantation go to rack and ruin for want of the funds by which he was profiting; and moreover, I had given Menou my word to be guided by him; so I put the receipt and my romantics in my pocket, and returned to the house to give my ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... more than a little of the horrors of blackmail. The pressure Garvey was bringing to bear upon his old enemy must be exceedingly strong. That was quite clear. At the same time, the commission that was being entrusted to him seemed somewhat quixotic in its nature. He had already "enjoyed" more than one experience of his employer's eccentricity, and he now caught himself wondering whether this same eccentricity did not sometimes go—further ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... of communicating this Quixotic reflection to Agatha Deriot, who was seated in front between Jill and myself, when there fell upon my reluctant ears that heavy sigh which only an expiring tire can heave. As I slowed up, it occurred to me that the puissance of the roads of ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... it possible not to despair of that untamable nature which age and reason, which so much attention and affection had left unmoved in her prejudices and her hatred? How was it possible to understand, and, above all, ever to overcome the quixotic sentiment, or rather the mania which had taken possession of that concentrated soul, and which was smoldering in it, ever ready to break forth ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... no doubt inconsistent, and may be deemed Quixotic, when we remember that for his poems Burns was quite willing to accept all that Creech would offer. Yet one cannot but honour it. He felt that both Johnson and Thomson were enthusiasts, labouring to embalm in a permanent form their country's minstrelsy, and that they ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... had not the means, or often the spirit, to oppose him, he continued to appear to her in the light in which she had first seen him. She adored his imperious temper, his erratic lavish generosity, his Quixotic standards, but with the reversal of their fortunes she was slowly brought to realize that money had provided most of the glamor which surrounded him. To be imperious with no one to obey makes for absurdity, and ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... carry your knapsack," said Arnfinn, who was flitting about like a small nimble spaniel trying to make friends with some large, good-natured Newfoundland. "You must be very tired, having roamed about in this Quixotic fashion!" ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... does it interest you? Why should you do such a quixotic thing? It is twenty-five ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... progressive policy, to relish the thought of a federation dominated by Guatemala and its masterful President. Though he "persuaded" Honduras to accept the plan, the three other republics preferred to unite in self-defense, and in the ensuing struggle the quixotic Barrios was killed. A few years later the project was revived and the constitution of a "Republic of Central America" was agreed upon, when war between Guatemala and Salvador again frustrated ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... 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 ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... at him. Even in the utter desolation of the moment she could not help marveling that this queer-mannered sailor, who spoke like a gentleman and tried to pose as her inferior, who had rescued her with the utmost gallantry, who carried his Quixotic zeal to the point of first supplying her needs when he was in far worse case himself, should be so utterly indifferent to the fate ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... while ago," said Mr. Yollop, shifting his position slightly, "that you rather fancy the idea of being arrested. Isn't that a little quixotic, Mr. Smilk?" ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... place very much in debt; and when Mr. Allan refused to accept some of the drafts with which he had paid losses in gaming, he wrote to him an abusive letter, quitted his house, and soon after left the country with the quixotic intention of joining the Greeks, then in the midst of their struggle with the Turks. He never reached his destination, and we know but little of his adventures in Europe for nearly a year. By the end of this time he had made his way to St. Petersburg, and our Minister in that capital, the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... special concern of Russia, so Luxemburg must look to France in the 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 the ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... scotched by the refusal of the Russian Government to grant him the necessary authorization and passports. But Borrow's energies were transferred to a project which scarcely, if at all, less deserves the epithet Quixotic. It was to disseminate a Castilian translation of the Vulgate (made by Father Scio at Valencia between 1790 and 1793) in Spain and Portugal. To disperse Bibles in Papua or in Park-lane were, it might be argued, an enterprise fully as hopeful as ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... vague and Quixotic as were his intentions, was performed with a far lighter heart than his setting forth. He would see Betty, and talk to her, come what ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... 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 them meant an argument—and an argument would ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... years of suspense, Marsden was willing to venture forth among the cannibals, but he was forbidden by Governor Macquarie. That all-powerful functionary was determined that such a valuable life should not be thrown away on what appeared to be a quixotic scheme. But the chaplain was not to be altogether balked. He received into his parsonage whatever Maoris of good standing he could find; showed them the varied activities of his model farm; and ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... the tail of the Grande Armee (escaped, God only knows how, from the snows of Russia), beggar, guerrillero, bandit, sceptically murderous, draping his rags in saturnine dignity—he had ended by becoming the sinister and grotesque squire of our quixotic Carlos. There was something romantically sombre in his devotion. He disdained to turn round at the danger, because he had left his heart on the coffin as a lesser affection would have laid a wreath. I looked down at Seraphina. She too, had left a heart in the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... 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 friend of his, Sir Edward ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... from a sense of loyalty to Grenville that Pitt had suffered the negotiations for his return to office in 1803 to fall through, and now when the two statesmen could return together, and when, if ever, a strong government was needed, either a quixotic sense of honour or a wounded pride induced Grenville not only to stand aloof from the new administration himself, but to do his utmost to prevent others from giving it their support.[25] The new cabinet was quickly formed. Pitt received the seals of office ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... sense of disappointment; he had always supposed that he would ultimately turn Jesuit in sober earnest, and die a martyr's death in the Far East. This would, in his opinion, have been a fine end to a Quixotic, very touching, most remarkable life. Would he now immaturely fall a victim to an enticing face and the cares of a household? Would he be able to sustain his character? One thing was certain. He could never again expect to exercise precisely the same potent influence as he had in the past, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... wish there were more. Less than a month before her death, she wrote to a friend a list of benevolent enterprises she has in mind and says, "Oh, it is such a luxury to be able to give without being afraid. I try not to be Quixotic, but I want to rain down blessings on all the world, in token of thankfulness for the blessings that have been ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... he understood his business and suggested I should attend strictly to mine. I told him I understood mine and that it included some personal honor. I was hot. I suggested that wildcat development was not my business. He called me a quixotic young fool among other things, and I may have called him a robber. I'm not sure. Anyway, ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... 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 him to ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... of the last Duke of Guise, who made a Quixotic attempt, in 1648, to seize upon the government of Naples, we find some curious particulars relative to the popular feeling with regard to poisoning. A man named Gennaro Annese, who, after the short and extraordinary career of Masaniello the fisherman, had established himself as a sort of captain-general ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... background of the past ages, the inevitable and legitimate offspring of the times and circumstances that gave it birth. The courtly baptism was eagerly sought, its requirements rigidly obeyed. The lands bristled with the lances of their valiant sons, and Quixotic expeditions were the order of the age. But not alone with sword and spear were gallant contests decided; the gauntlet thrown at the feet of a proud foe was not always of iron. El gai saber, the gaye science, held its august courts, where princesses entered the lists and vanquished ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... charm into which, if sentimentally disposed, you can read an ocean of love; these need not be supplied with safety-pins. An enthusiastic Frenchman at Gabes actually married one of these sphynx-like creatures—a hazardous and quixotic experiment. As brides for a lifetime (slaves) they cost from a hundred to six hundred francs apiece, and even more; and you will do well to abonner yourself with the family beforehand, in order to be sure of obtaining ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... his Majesty promptly defined it to be: Tom-foolery and KINDERSPIEL, what else? Whereupon ingenious Buckeburg, who was himself a Mason, man of forty by this time, and had high things in him of the Quixotic type, ventured on defence; and was so respectful, eloquent, dexterous, ingenious, he quite captivated, if not his Majesty, at least the Crown-Prince, who was more enthusiastic for high things. Crown-Prince, after table, took his Durchlaucht of Buckeburg aside; talked farther on the subject, expressed ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... this wonderful country, still it is no place for you, Madeline Hammond. You have your position, your wealth, your name, your family. You must marry. You must have children. You must not give up all that for a quixotic life in ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... the following morning with his two elder children, and I was now confronted with the task of managing them and making them useful. Upon one thing I was certainly resolved—there should be no quixotic sentiment in our relations, and no companionship ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... 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 man," and is ushered into my library. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... not, it was most ill-advised, probably some quixotic idea about not wanting to testify against his friend. If you knew the boy you would understand what a hot-headed, harum-scarum person he is. He was my pupil at one time and I grew quite fond of him. He has ability, undoubted ability, but ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... to the frontier, Charette and other of the French officers went to the battlefields of their prostrate country, and thus it came to pass that the Pope's defenders were found fighting side by side with Garibaldi; they, indeed, only doing their simple duty, but he, acting on an impulse of Quixotic generosity which was repaid—the ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Cunningham, March 17, 1869). 'I am thoroughly and grievously out of spirits about these plans of ours. On the whole I incline towards them; but they not unfrequently seem to me cruel to Mary, cruel to the children, undutiful to my mother, Quixotic and rash and impatient as regards myself and my own prospects.... I have not had a really cheerful and easy day for weeks past, and I have got to feel at last almost beaten by it.' He goes on to tell how he has been chaffed with the characteristic freedom of barristers for his consequent ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... had found that Stephen did not sympathize at all in her enthusiasm. "The people over at Danby are all crazy about him, I think," said Stephen. "He is a very good man no doubt, and does no end of things for the college boys, that none of the other professors do. But I think he is quixotic and sentimental; and all this stuff about those niggers at the Cedars is moonshine. They'd pick his very pocket, I daresay, any day; and he'd never suspect them. I know that lot too well. The Lord himself ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... 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
... never met with very warm support in carrying on this object, but was often exposed to some sarcastical insinuations or sardonic smiles from those who thought the attempt to ameliorate the condition of the Gipsies, only Quixotic. ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... things run their course; he agreed with Erica all the time, though his heart impelled him to keep her at home. And as to Eric Haeberlein, it would have needed a far stronger mind than that of the sweet-tempered, quixotic German to resist the generous help offered ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... it is not customary to suppose that devotion to the service of mankind is rational; it is taken to be gratuitous, if not quixotic. But once let it be granted that goodness accrues to action in proportion to its fruitfulness, it follows that that action is most blessed that is dedicated without reservation to the general life. There is only one course which can recommend itself to that fair and open mind to which I conceive ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry |
