"Errant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... give you but a brief account of it, for my enjoyment was so connected with my special studies that the details would only be tiresome to you. You know who were my traveling companions, so I have only to tell you of our adventures, assuredly not those of knights errant or troubadours. Could these gentry have been resuscitated, and have seen us starting forth in blouses, with bags or botanical boxes at our backs and butterfly-nets in our hands, instead of lance and buckler, they could hardly have failed ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... covered or grass grown or lost underneath the farmers' furrow; but in the selections of this volume, many of them poems by courtesy, men of today and those who are to follow, may sense, at least in some small measure, the service, the glamour, the romance of that knight-errant ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... had been pawned to the merchant from whom he had obtained it, he instituted inquiries as to its owner, and ultimately restored the scroll to him with the addition of five gold ryo. The owner was a knight-errant (ronin) named Imagawa Motome, who thereafter entered Masamune's service and ultimately rose to be a general of infantry (ashigaru). The sympathy which taught Masamune to estimate the pain with which the owner of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... a man of large hopes and large plans. His single aim and purpose was the independence and unification of Italy. He was the genius of Italian liberty. Garibaldi, "the hero of the red shirt," was the knight-errant of Italian independence. Though yet barely past middle life, he had led a career singularly crowded with varied experiences and romantic adventures. Because of his violent republicanism, he had already been ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... sick. The diagnosis of Yabolo, the wizard, was that her soul had wandered in sleep down to the river and had been swallowed by a fish. Yabolo had caught the fish and lured the soul into a tree, but now he demanded such a big price to restore the errant soul to the girl that her father, Bakuma's uncle, would not pay it, so she would surely die; then they would all have to be exorcised, which inferred a further loss of relative freedom for another four days. Indeed with all these actual and possible delays it seemed ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... common road. Do but survey this crowded house to-night:— Here's still encouragement for those that write. 30 Our author, to divert his friends to-day, Stocks with variety of fools his play; And that there may be something gay and new, Two ladies-errant has exposed to view: The first a damsel, travelled in romance; The t'other more refined; she comes from France: Rescue, like courteous knights, the nymph from danger; And kindly treat, like well-bred ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Winn had been so nice to her, particularly as he hadn't appeared at all a friendly kind of person; but she became more and more convinced that Winn was a knight errant in disguise and had been sent by heaven to her ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... wicked being, we may give the matured and recent judgment of Ralph Flare himself. Put to the test of religion, or even of respectability, this intimacy was baneful. A wild young man had broken his honor for the companionship of a poor, errant girl. She was poor, but she hated to work; she had no regard for his money; she did not share his ambition. Making against her a case thus clear and certain, Ralph Flare entered for Suzette the plea of not wicked, and this was ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... that Most Illustrious and Puissant Knight Errant, Sir Slosson Thompson, Erstwhile of Chicago, but ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... immediately, and crossed the room aimlessly to sit in another chair. She pressed her palms tightly against both cheeks, drew in her breath as if she were going to speak, and, after all, said nothing. She looked out of the window, pushing back the errant strand ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... and ability, had so put questions for her own enlightenment as to reveal to him that she possessed a secret. To cajole it from her, so far as she knew it, had been no greater difficulty than it was to the fox to get the cheese from the crow: and while to him she was the errant unprotected young lady of large and tempting fortune, he could easily make himself appear to her the missing link in the pursuit. He could do what as a woman she could not accomplish, and what her ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the press who has just arrived on the Delectable Mountains, comes rushing in, looks over my shoulder, and says, "A deuced expensive thing a Viceroy." This little errant knight would take the thunder at a quarter of the price, and keep the Empire paralytic with change and fear of change as if the great Thirty-thousand-pounder himself ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... Thou errant Prince, desist from this adventure. See, I am nowise cruel, as men say. It is but my deep loathing for all males That forces me to stand as now at guard To keep from me a sex that I abhor. Why should ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... abode, exercising themselves in all feats of arms. So when spring returned they set forth, as knights errant, to ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... found it to surprise Barcelona. William listened, meditated, and replied, in general terms, that he took a great interest in English affairs, and would keep his attention fixed on them. [224] Whatever his purpose had been, it is not likely that he would have chosen a rash and vainglorious knight errant for his confidant. Between the two men there was nothing in common except personal courage, which rose in both to the height of fabulous heroism. Mordaunt wanted merely to enjoy the excitement of conflict, and to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... burning zeal of the founders of the Franciscans and of the Jesuits? Of the first he had nothing more to say than that he was 'at first only a well-minded but weak enthusiast, afterwards a mere hypocrite and impostor;' of the other he spoke with a certain compassion as 'that errant, shatter-brained, visionary fanatic.'[609] And the Methodist, he thought, had a somewhat 'similar ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... was the goddess of dark nights, and upon her the mighty Zeus bestowed the doubtful favour of his errant love. Great was the wrath of Hera, his queen, when she found that she was no longer the dearest wife of her omnipotent lord, and with furious upbraidings she banished her rival to earth. And when Latona ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... bothered him. With her he had bridged a gulf it would have taken weeks to span, but the trust in Joan's eyes still hurt. If only he could have begun upon a rock, Brian's rock of fact and not the shifting sands of his own errant fancy! It would have been a glory to live up to the faith in ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... laughed. "I told you Denis was jealous," she exclaimed. "Knights errant always are. I've always suspected that St. George ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Charles V. He was no knight-errant like his father, and his diplomatic gifts, tact, and patience made him much better fitted than John for outwitting his English enemies and for restoring order to France. Slowly but surely he grappled with the companies, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... wish to represent Frank as a sort of knight-errant, but the fact is that if anyone with respectable and humane ideas goes on the tramp (I have this from the mouth of experienced persons) he has to make up his mind fairly soon either to be a redresser of ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... were born unwelcome, Ralph Waldo Emerson was making a living as author and sage of his generation, and there were others of the Transcendentalists—Thoreau, the woodland poet, Margaret Fuller, the woman knight-errant, recently drowned at sea, and Amos Bronson Alcott—whose writings appeared in standard editions and who lived by their pens. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a professor at Harvard till 1854, though savagely ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... of which not a stick or a stone that one looks at is one's own, and whence one may be evicted or evade, with a week's notice or a week's rent, any day—this sort of life is natural and even delightful to some people. There are those who, like strawberry plants, are of such an errant disposition, that grow them where you will, they will soon absorb all the pleasantness of their habitat, and begin casting out runners elsewhere; may, if not frequently transplanted, would actually wither ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... the least the fair damsel could do for her knight-errant was to bind up his wounds, but Cis was too shy to show any disposition so to do, and it was Mrs. Talbot who salved the scratch for him. She had a feeling for the motherless youth, upon whom she foreboded that a fatal game might ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what few besides Americans can say; and when it can be said truly, in parts of the country where the arts of life have spread, and amid the blessings of civilization, it becomes the foundation of a sentiment so profound, that I do not wonder those adventurers-errant who are flying about the face of the country, thrusting their hands into every man's mess, have not been able to find it among their other superficial discoveries. Nothing can be less like the ordinary cravings of avarice than the feeling that is thus engendered; and I am certain that ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... no greater knight errant than the King himself, and none so steeped in every quaint usage of chivalry; so that the situation was after ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "hesitate no further; put them in your pocket; and to relieve our position of any shadow of embarrassment, tell me by what name I am to address my knight-errant, for I find myself reduced to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trouble?" demanded Yerkes, and the woman signed to us to go on in. Yerkes led the way again impulsively as any knight-errant rescuing beleaguered dames, but I looked back and saw that the Syrian woman had locked the outer door. Before I could tell Will that, he was in the next room, so I followed, and, ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... to England a sort of Yankee knight-errant to fight for his country. He had the wisdom to fight with his visor down, and quarter on the enemy. He took heavy tribute from Blackwood and others for his articles vindicating America, which came to be extravagantly quoted and read. His article for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... it would have been of little avail, as, according to the good custom of North Britain, the inscription had been defaced shortly after its erection. Our adventurer was therefore compelled, like a knight-errant of old, to trust to the sagacity of his horse, which, without any demur, chose the left-hand path, and seemed to proceed at a somewhat livelier pace than before, affording thereby a hope that he knew he was drawing near to his quarters for the evening. This ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... tired of his dumb visitor, and leaning on his axe he said, "Look here, Sis, what have you come for? What's your errant? Do you want apples? Or cider? Or what? Speak out, or GIT ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... good of others. He, in civil life, whose thoughts turn upon schemes which may be of general benefit, without further reflection, is called a projector; and the man whose mind seems intent upon glorious achievements, a knight-errant. The ridicule among us runs strong against laudable actions; nay, in the ordinary course of things, and the common regards of life, negligence of the public is an epidemic vice. The brewer in his excise, the merchant in his customs, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... day to play knight-errant to ladies in distress. Presently Mrs. Carr's cabin-door opened, and that lady herself emerged therefrom, holding on to the side-rail. He had just begun to observe how charmingly she was dressed, when some qualm seized her, and she returned to re-enter the cabin. But the door had ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... turned as red with pleasure as if it had been dipped in the sun. If this young lady was going to California, he might perhaps be her knight-errant across the desert, guard her from privations and hardships, and crown himself with her smiles. If she was poor, he might—well, he would not speculate upon that; it was ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... an Indian; it was hard for her to make admissions about her husband. But then—we were like two errant school-girls, who had been caught m an escapade! "I don't know what I'm going to do about him," she said, with a wry smile. "He really won't listen—I can't make any impression on ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... The horse belonging to Don Quixote who was the romantic and absurdly chivalric hero of a satirical Spanish novel entitled The History of the Valorous and Witty Knight Errant, Don Quixote of ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... whatever side they fought, they took care that the profits of war should accrue to their own colony. Quarrel as they might among themselves, they were always found at one against a common foe. And such was their reputation in the field, that the hardiest soldiers errant of all nations joined their standard. Thus it fell out that when Ardoin and his Normans had helped Maniaces to wrest the eastern districts of Sicily from the Moors, they returned, upon an insult offered ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... and happier hills; it all depends on what the chalk means to you: you may be unfamiliar with it and in that case you will not notice it; or you may have been born among those thyme-scented hills and yet have no errant fancies, so that you will not think of the hills that watched you as a child, but only keep your mind on the business in hand; that ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... Boston, our errant knight, before setting out upon his quest for the Fame and Fortune to whose service he was sworn, spent some hours in wandering about the old town, with mind open to the quickening influences of historic association ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... from the first the movement had been in the hands of turbulent feudatories, inspired by chivalry rather than religion. Their leader, Boniface of Montferrat, the patron of all the troubadours and knights-errant of the South, was a sworn friend of the Pope's worst enemy, Philip of Suabia, the brother and successor of the Emperor Henry VI. Boniface had been elected to the command without the sanction of the Pope; and from an early date was in league with Philip to turn the Crusade against Constantinople. ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... is given in a grand tableau, after Martin's picture. That painter, in like manner, furnished scenes for the Deluge. Vast numbers of schoolboys and children are brought to see these pieces; the lower classes delight in them. The famous Juif Errant, at the theatre of the Porte St. Martin, was the first of the kind, and its prodigious success, no doubt, occasioned the number of imitations which ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... caught a wandering air and drifted indolently down through the darkness of the street, like an errant petal plucked from some strange and sinister ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... creatur', and I expect Sam thought she was all creation for a spell; but she never could tell him from Sim, and Sim didn't take to her no way, shape or manner. That suited their Ma first rate, and she'd take a day when Sam was off to market, and then she'd send Sim on an errant down to Bean's. I rec'lect I was there one day when he come,—I guess I was some taken with Ivy myself, for she was a pretty piece. When she see him she begun to roll her eyes and simper up the way gals do—I ask your pardon, Miss Hands! ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... breakfast her father and brothers all went away, and she was alone in the house. She went about her work singing for the first time for weeks. She raised her voice high in a gay ditty which was then in vogue, entitled "The Knight Errant": ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fellow-creature, and Darsie's heart had a way of making excuses for the handsome truant, who smiled with such beguiling eyes, had such a pretty knack of compliment, and was—generally!—ready to play knight-errant in her service. She felt herself lucky in possessing so charming a friend to act the part of gallant, and to be at her service when she chose to call. And then quite suddenly she drew a sharp breath and said aloud in a trembling voice, "Oh, Aunt Maria, dear Aunt Maria!" and ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... political reference, invisible to our eyes, but very clear to the bright little minds for whom it was intended. Politics were evidently their grand interest; the Duke of Wellington their demi-god. All that related to him belonged to the heroic age. Did Charlotte want a knight-errant, or a devoted lover, the Marquis of Douro, or Lord Charles Wellesley, came ready to her hand. There is hardly one of her prose-writings at this time in which they are not the principal personages, and in which their "august ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... live the Jenkins family, a colored Episcopal church had recently been established. The rector had but one surplice, and that had been stolen from the clothes-line, mayhap by one of his dusky flock; thus it was that Amarilly received a call from the Reverend Virgil Washington, who had heard of the errant surplice, which ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... by his side at night her arm stole about his, as if to clutch him, fearful lest in the empty reaches of sleep he might escape, lest his errant man's thoughts and desires might abandon her for the usual avenues of life. Long after he had fallen into the regular sleep of night, she lay awake by his side, her eyes glittering with passion and defeat. Even in these limits of life, when the whole world was banned, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... knight errant ye wit not of. But the tournament's not over yet, and this time I've got the rabbit: he thinks ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... impossible. In the former no change. He had merely kicked over traces and was now come back to run in them. Thought of this with some bitterness. But reception well meant. There was the Aged P. violently beckoning with venerable forefinger, and the errant son made his way up to him, fell on his neck and kissed him——this of course in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... transactions of life. Thus in the Golden Age, there was something very comical in human creatures eating acorns, like pigs. The Augustan Age was comical enough, if we may trust some of Horace's satires. Much comicality was displayed in the Middle Ages, in the proceedings of the knights errant, the doings in Palestine, and the mode adopted by the priests of inculcating religion on the minds of the people. In the Elizabethan Age several comic incidents occurred at court; particularly when any of the courtiers ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... 261.).—Your correspondent will find an account of the Wandering Jew prefixed to "Le Juif errant," the 3ieme livraison of Chants et Chansons Populaires de ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... passionate purity of her mouth. "No, certainly not, never," he muttered, extraordinarily stirred. He asserted to himself that he would make no such fatal mistake. The other, the errant fancy, was no more than a vagrant unimportant impulse. "Don't let these women, who cat around, upset you; probably they are thinking not so much about their husbands as they are of themselves. I've seen that Alice Lucian parked out in a limousine during a dance, and ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... room soon became insupportable. I abandoned it, and sought what is technically called the travellers'-room. This is a public room set apart at most inns for the accommodation of a class of wayfarers called travellers, or riders; a kind of commercial knights-errant, who are incessantly scouring the kingdom in gigs, on horseback, or by coach. They are the only successors that I know of, at the present day, to the knights-errant of yore. They lead the same kind of roving adventurous life, only changing the lance for a driving-whip, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... and accepted members of this order of modern knights-errant, from hot-headed, ill-fated Pilatre de Rozier down to Gaston Tissandier, the man who still edits La Nature in the lower strata of an ocean into the treacherous upper depths of which he has risen seven miles. Your true aeronaut is not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... country. There they read the books together, Walter always a little ahead of his friend, and obliged to wait at the end of every two pages for him to catch up. The books were almost always stories of knights-errant; the romances of Spenser, the "Castle of Otranto," and translations from such Italian writers as Ariosto, were ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... for his peculiar ear. The nod of the saugh leaf on the banks was a salutation. There is, in a flutter of the tree's young plumage, some hint of communication whose secret we lose as we age, and the boy, among it, felt the warmth of companionship. But the sights were for the errant moments of his mind; his thoughts, most of the way, were on ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... consider, while Molly suddenly whirled down the street and pounced on the errant collie. Seeing this, Constable McSherry turned to continue ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... flourishing condition of his trade. The asses of Africa are finer than those in the north; but this is fine for an African. One fellow mounts upon it, and sets off with the world before him, like a knight-errant, seeking an adventure, the rabble at his tail acting as squire. He begins the circuit of the Forum, and picks up its riff-raff as he goes along—here some rascal boys, there some drunken women, here again a number of half-brutalized country slaves and peasants. Partly out of curiosity, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... means for racing about Europe in charge of a disreputable parent. I could picture her settled equably on a garden seat with a lapdog and needlework, blinking happily over green lawns and mildly rating an errant gardener. I could fancy her sitting in a summer parlour, very orderly and dainty, writing lengthy epistles to a tribe of nieces. I could see her marshalling a household in the family pew, or riding serenely in the family coach behind fat bay horses. But here, on ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Colonel, 'there has been no malice prepense, as lawyers, I think, term it, in this rash step of yours; and you have been trepanned into the service of this Italian knight-errant by a few civil speeches from him, and one or two of his Highland recruiting sergeants? It is sadly foolish, to be sure, but not nearly so bad as I was led to expect. However, you cannot desert, even from the Pretender, at the present moment,—that seems impossible. But I have little ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Wildgoose, a young Oxford man who, living in retirement with his mother in the country, becomes an evangelist, very mainly from want of some more interesting occupation, is altogether good-humoured. Wildgoose promptly falls in love with a fascinating damsel-errant, Julia Townsend; and the various adventures, religious, picaresque, and amatory, are embroiled and disembroiled with very fair skill in character and fairer still in narrative. Nor is the Sancho-Partridge of the piece, Jerry ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Sir Dagonet, "I pick Wales, since Kinkenadon is the nearer to Ireland. My fool's head still fancies that we shall have need to turn there ere we shall find this errant knight." ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... scarcely fair to describe Hermione's tone as suspicious, for she was a loyal soul, and was wondering in her heart of hearts what manner of man this knight errant could be; but his very self-possession fluttered her; she had been so accustomed to think and act in her own defense that she experienced a subtle fear of this calm, cool-headed, masterful person whom she must learn to ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... seule toujours!—Perdue Comme un point invisible en un mouvant desert, L'aventuriere passe errant dans l'etendue, Et voit tel cap secret qui n'est pas decouvert. Tremblante voyageuse a flotter condamnee, Elle sent sur son col que depuis une annee L'algue et les goemons ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... had two stories, were arranged so as to enclose a large grassy square, which was guarded by a strong palisade from the encroachments of errant hogs, goats, and fowls. This spot, among other uses, served as a convenient day-nursery for the babies, and also a place of occasional frolic and recreation to ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... bold knight-errant, From his castle who would roam, Trusting her, my faithful steward, For a strict account of home; And each day I toil, and hazard All that any man may dare, For a resting-place at even, And the love that waits ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... full of Poppies, and the skies are very blue, By the Temple in the coppice, I wait, Beloved, for you. The level land is sunny, and the errant air is gay, With scent of rose and honey; will you ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... office-boy-in-charge, who had quietly suppressed it. No one is a hero to one's own office-boy, and he evidently considered that a quarter of a million was an unwarrantable outlay for such a doubtfully advantageous object as the repatriation of an errant newspaper staff. So he drew the editorial and other salaries, forged what signatures were necessary, engaged new reporters, did what sub-editing he could, and made as much use as possible of the large accumulation of special articles that was ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... too curiously into his reasons for not wearing a nightcap—a subject which seems to have interested him profoundly; he permitted himself to say in his journal that he was so much pleased with some pretty ladies' maids at the Duke of Argyll's, that he felt he could "have been a knight-errant for them," and his "venerable fellow-traveller" read the passage without censuring his levity. The great man himself could be equally volatile. "I have often thought," he observed one day, to Boswell's amusement, "that if I kept a seraglio, the ladies should all wear linen gowns"—as more cleanly. ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Here, on this fair oasis, you will find painting, poetry, dancing, theatres, and music, fetes and fireworks, with all the little amorous arts that characterise a nation's decline. You will meet with numerous Don Quixotes, soi-disant knights-errant, Romeos without the heart, and ruffians without the courage. You will meet with many things before you encounter either virtue or honesty. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... a melancholy old barrel-organ in the courtyard, go to the window and give a penny to the poor errant [Footnote: Errant: wandering.] musician—perhaps it is Don Gaetano! If you find that his organ disturbs you, try if you like it, better by making him stand a little farther off, but don't send him away with harshness! He has to bear so many hard words ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... fond of you, Royal," she said, bravely, "you know, that—that I cannot bear to think of you doing anything in this world that is not fine and for the best. But if you will be a knight errant, and seek out dangers and fight windmills, promise me to be a true knight and that you will fight only when you must and only on the side that is just, and then you will come back bringing your ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... can be, Fanny, when you think it necessary to dub yourself any one's champion. Don Quixote was not a better knight-errant than you are. But is it not a pity to take up your lance and shield before an enemy is within sight or hearing? But that was ever the ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... glad of that. Ungrateful too! That's well; You improve apace;—two changes in an instant, 490 And you are old in the World's ways already. But bear with me: indeed you'll find me useful Upon your pilgrimage. But come, pronounce Where shall we now be errant? ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... and the chivalry and the courtesy and the honour of the social organism man builds for his own habitation? The idea of knighthood still stirs us and the deeds of chivalry and the courtesy and the honour of the social Knights of the Round Table, Crusaders and knights errant, the quest of the Holy Grail, rescue and adventure, the fighting with paynims and powers of evil, still stir our blood and arouse in our minds strange contrasts and antinomies. Princes and fair chatelaines in their wide domains with castle and chase and delicate pleasaunce, liege-men ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... what we think? We drift along, knowing nothing of one another, like the errant winds or the stars in the skies. We pass by hundreds, without so much as a glance, until fate as in a lightning flash brings us face to face with the one appointed. And then—in a moment we know that we belong to each other, we are drawn together by ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... the hunter-star Orion (Or, it may be, Charles his Wain) Tempts the tiny elves to try on All their little tricks again; When the earth is calmly breathing Draughts of slumber undefiled, And the sire, unused to teething, Seeks for errant pins his child; ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... along. Hadst thou a mind to make thyself a good title to the merit to which thou now pretendest to lay claim, thou shouldest, like a true knight-errant, have sought to set the lady free from the enchanted castle. Thou shouldst have apprized her of her danger; have stolen in, when the giant was out of the way; or, hadst thou had the true spirit of chivalry upon thee, and nothing else would have done, have killed the giant; and then something wouldst ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... his understanding, he unluckily stumbled upon the oddest fancy that ever entered into a madman's brain; for now he thought it convenient and necessary, as well for the increase of his own honor as the service of the public, to turn knight-errant, and roam through the whole world, armed cap-a-pie, and mounted on his steed, in quest of adventures; that thus imitating those knights-errant of whom he had read, and following their course of life, redressing all ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... an errant curl—my daughters, madam, will bear me out when I say that only excess of feeling prevents their mother from joining in this—may I call it ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... uncertain of supply, hunters and their families must range over extensive countries, and often remove from place to place. Judging that children of feeble or defective formation are not likely to survive the hardships of this errant life, they destroy all such unpromising offspring,[237] or desert them to a slower and more dreadful fate. The lot of all is so hard that few born with any great constitutional defect could long survive, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... musicians errant still strum their mandoline as you dine. The old trattoria in the Toledo is as good as ever, as bright, as comfortable. I have found my old corner in one of the little rooms, and something of the old gusto for zuppa di vongole. The homely wine of Posillipo smacks ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... "Dear Knight Errant," he read, in the same desperate handwriting. "Do you remember once years ago coming to the rescue of a lady in distress who was chased by a bull? The lady has never forgotten it. Will you do the same again for the same lady to-day, ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... was left for a knight-errant in the Spain of to-day, ruling by steel and shot and flame and gold? It must be rather awful, the listener reflected, to see your own country go rotten like that in a generation. Yet there was no bitterness in the old hidalgo's tranquil ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... with as many passengers on board, and pushed it forcibly right down into the sea, and then up sprang its nose and it heeled over and shot suddenly off, careering on the waves into the offing where other yachts were sliding to and fro between the piers, dominating errant fleets of rowboats. And the piers also were loaded with excited humanity and radiant colour. And all the windows of all the houses and hotels were open, and blowing with curtains and flowers and hats. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... choosing the starting point of the most thrilling adventure in a life already adventurous; that the soft carpet of the Embankment Hotel might waft him to scenes not within the common scope. That is ever the way of true romance. Your knight errant may wander in the forest for a day or a year,—he never knows the moment when the enchanted glade shall open before his eyes; nay, he scarce has seen the weeping maiden bound to a tree ere he is called in to couch his lance and ride a-tilt at ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... incontestable verity, there is an infallible method of knowing this verity, and by the knowledge of it, those who accept it as a rule may give their will a sovereign power that will make them the masters of all inferior things and of all errant spirits; that is to say, will make them the Arbiters and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... . . Miss Erroll is naturally worried over him. But I wonder why she did not come to me herself instead of sending you as her errant ambassador?" ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... the code of honour; it was the constant object of vituperation on his part, even from the pulpit. His notions on this point, however, never gained ground with his hearers, who could not be brought to believe that their master (himself as true a knight errant as ever drew sword or pen,) was serious when he told them that the spirit of chivalry was ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... more purely intellectual side of mysticism comes out more strongly than the exstatic—so dominant in these societies of the fourteenth—and we have Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa, with Giordano Bruno, the martyred knight-errant of philosophy, and Paracelsus, the much slandered scientist, who drew his knowledge directly from the original eastern fountain, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... saint was more successful. Laurentia, a maiden of youthful years, placed by her father within the sheltering walls of a cloister, to assume ultimately monastic vows, was quickly captured by an errant demon. As an irrefutable demonstration of the impure origin of her infirmity, an annalist asserts, this spirit promptly answered in elegant Latinity all questions propounded; but the strongest confirmation of ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... to lisp abroad; To return knowing in the Spanish Shrug, Or which of the Dutch States a double Jug Resembles most in Belly or in Beard; The Card by which the Mariners are Steer'd. No! The Scots-Errant fight, and fight to eat; Their Ostrich Stomachs make their Swords their Meat. Nature with Scots as Tooth-drawers has dealt, Who use to string their Teeth upon their Belt. Not Gold, nor Acts of Grace, 'tis Steel must tame The Stubborn Scot: ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... of all classes of readers. Every school-boy thumbs to pieces the most wretched translations of his romance, and knows the lantern jaws of the Knight Errant, and the broad cheeks of the Squire, as well as the faces of his own playfellows. The most experienced and fastidious judges are amazed at the perfection of that art which extracts inextinguishable laughter from the greatest of human calamities without once violating the reverence ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... confidence of the relater. How many may a man of diffusive conversation count among his acquaintances, whose lives have been signalized by numberless escapes; who never cross the river but in a storm, or take a journey into the country without more adventures than befel the knights-errant of ancient times in pathless forests or enchanted castles! How many must he know, to whom portents and prodigies are of daily occurrence; and for whom nature is hourly working wonders invisible to every other eye, only to supply them with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... we have reached this goal [union with the Divinity]. Can our plummet even sound it and explore in the deep abyss, the matchless wonder of the immeasurable being? And because the revolving wheel of my spirit has found no rest in all that it has seen, known, possessed and enjoyed, it stretched its errant senses continuously towards what was still held back, and kept, by the strong rock of omnipotence; to struggle towards which with a fresh attack I resolutely determined, and would be sent away with nothing less than the kingdom and the ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... and honorable class, I trust. The Chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker—not the Knight, but Walker, Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... man manliest;—not puny resolve, not crude determination, not errant purpose, but that strong and indefatigable will which treads down difficulties and danger as a boy treads down the heaving frost-lands of winter,—which kindles his eye and brain with a proud pulse-beat toward ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... I took a holiday and returned to Cumberland. I found Roland there on my return. Always of a roving, adventurous temper, though he had not then entered the army, he had, for more than two years, been wandering over Great Britain and Ireland on foot. It was a young knight-errant whom I embraced, and who overwhelmed me with reproaches that I should be reading for the law. There had never been a lawyer in the family! It was about that time, I think, that I petrified him with the discovery of the printer! I knew not exactly wherefore, whether ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... West. The East. An American Literature. Newspaper Enterprise, Mails, Eleemosynary Institutions. American Character. Temperance Reform. The Land of the Free. Religion. Anti-masonic Movement. Banking Craze. Moon Hoax. Party Spirit. Jackson as a Knight Errant. His Self-will. Enmity between Adams and ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... a deputy-errant, naturally include an introduction to the female prisoners; and Tallien's presence afforded Mad. de Fontenay an occasion of pleading her cause with all the success which such a pleader might, in other ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... assigned to some white units.[14-106] At the same time Gray was not prepared to admit that the incident demonstrated how open his plan was to evasion, just as he refused to admit that his rescinding of the errant message represented a change in policy. He would continue, in effect, the plan approved by the Secretary of Defense on ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... the acquaintance of an old sealer. He had formerly been very sensitive on the point of honour; would resent an insult as promptly as any knight-errant; but by making an idol of his honour his life had been a grievous burden to him. And he was not even a gentleman, and never had been one. He ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... his errant camp for barter into a stronghold for the trade, making the "Niste-y-ak" of the "Crees" his settled home, the white man's grasp of the fair domain but grew with years. From the seas of the far north ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... his old delusions in a manner which to most Englishmen must seem singular, but which those who know how close was the union between religion and chivalry in Spain will be at no loss to understand. He would still be a soldier, he would still be a knight errant; but the soldier and knight errant of the spouse of Christ. He would smite the Great Red Dragon. He would be the champion of the Woman clothed with the Sun. He would break the charm under which false prophets held the souls of men in bondage. His restless spirit led him to the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... these various essentials of a rhyming play, we may perhaps, without impropriety define it to be a metrical romance of chivalry in form of a drama. The hero is a perfect knight-errant, invincible in battle, and devoted to his Dulcinea by a love, subtle, metaphysical and abstracted from all the usual qualities of the instinctive passion; his adventures diversified by splendid descriptions of bull-feasts, battles, and tournaments; his fortune undergoing the strangest, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... taxes unparalleled in the world, he sought, I might almost say, he advertised for enemies, and provoked means to increase taxation. Aiming at something, he knew not what, he ransacked Europe and India for adventures, and abandoning the fair pretensions he began with, he became the knight-errant of modern times. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... necessary and pausing on your way to tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that, you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel alert and dashing, like a jolly old knight-errant or something of that kind. I felt that I was with her in this ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... native brought a letter from the errant lady addressed to her furious spouse. This missive is (without explaining how he got it) reproduced by an American journalist, T. Everett Harre, in a series of articles, The Heavenly Sinner: "I suggest," runs an extract, "you come to your senses ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Captains Baxter and Conyers were particularly distinguished,—the first for his gigantic frame, which was informed by a corresponding courage; the latter by his equal bravery and horsemanship. He was a sort of knight-errant in the brigade, and his behavior seemed not unfrequently dictated by a passion for chivalrous display. An anecdote, in connection with Conyers, is told, which will serve to show what was the spirit ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... went for his cane [Footnote: Lincoln's cane. This was the cane he carried, instead of going armed. But he was forever leaving it anywhere about, so that, nine times out of ten, he went forth without it on his errant "browsing" around; and it was a wonder that this time he knew where to find it.] and, placing the ferule end to the wall, to act as a level, he bade the young man draw near and stand under. When the rod was carefully adjusted to the top of the ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... Dean, or Patrick's down went, Like two arrand Deans, two Deans errant I meant; So that Christmas appears at Bellcampe like a Lent, Gives the gamesters of both houses great discontent. Our parsons agree here, as those did at Trent, Dan's forehead has got a most damnable dent, Besides a large hole in his Michaelmas rent. But your ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... less imaginative individual minds—with one, here or there, eminent, though but by a little, above a merely receptive majority, the spokesman of a universal, though faintly-felt prepossession, attaching the errant fancies of the people around him to definite names and images. The myth grew up gradually, and at many distant places, in many minds, independent of each other, but dealing in a common temper with certain elements and aspects of the natural world, as ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... too near the turrets. A plague on parliament; starvation to all imbued with the new philosophy; and death to the younger branch of the Mauprats—such were the watchwords of these men who, to crown all, gave themselves the airs of knights-errant of the twelfth century. My grandfather talked of nothing but his pedigree and the prowess of his ancestors. He regretted the good old days when every lordling had instruments of torture in his manor, and dungeons, and, best, of all cannon. In ours we ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... at times for existence, holds an honorable position in the annals of German literature. The Babenberg dukes were generous patrons of the Muses. Their court was frequented by minnesingers and knights-errant. Their praises were sung by Walther von der Vogelweide, Ulrich von Lichtenstein and others. Walther, in his ode to Duke Leopold, has almost anticipated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... and witty-knight-errant, Don-Quixote, of the Mancha. Translated out of the Spanish; now newly corrected and amended. London, by Richard Hodkinsonne, for Andrew Crooke, ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... and that common Vice of the Town, Gaming, soon run out my younger Brother's Fortune: for imagining, like some of the luckier Gamesters, to improve my Stock at the Groom Porter's, I ventur'd on, and lost all. My elder Brother, an errant Jew, had neither Friendship nor Honour enough to support me; but at last being mollified by Persuasions, and the hopes of being for ever rid of me, sent me hither with a small ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... The words were addressed by Don Quijote to members of the rural police who were arresting him for depredations committed on the highway. The full sentence in Ormsby's translation reads: "Who was he that did not know that knights-errant are independent of all jurisdictions, that their law is their sword, their charter their prowess, and their edicts their will?" This Spanish declaration of independence was frequently used as a slogan by the Romanticists. Espronceda is here ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup |
