"Quixotism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... persevering courage. In fact, the slightest review of Indian history, ever since the first introduction of Mahometanism, justifies Lord Auckland's general purpose of interweaving Affghanistan with the political system of India. This was no purpose of itinerant Quixotism— seeking enemies where none offered of themselves. Affghans were always enemies; they formed the castra stativa of hostility to India. For eight hundred years, ever since the earliest invader under the Prophet's banner, (Mahommed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... it was addressed had been tolerably successful in persuading themselves of the innocence of their calling; and what remained of doubt in their mind was smothered, and, so to speak, laboriously forgotten. Some of them laughed at my arguments, as a ridiculous piece of missionary quixotism. Others, and particularly our captain, repelled them with the boldness of a man that knows he has got the strongest side. But this sentiment of ease and self-satisfaction did not long remain. They had been used ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... denationalize Egypt, to degenerate the Jews, to mammonize once generous Greece, and carry republican equality into the great prairies of America: it is the undistinguishing, humiliating, unchivalrous livery of our cold cosmopolites. But enough of this: pews and spires are to my Quixotism not more unextinguishable foes, than ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... "That Girl from Orange again." He opened his lips once more to launch nervous English against this quixotism, but Strong interposed. ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... earnest and solemn assurances of Eugenie that she was not the unknown donor of the sum she reinclosed, after puzzling himself in vain to form any new conjectures as to the quarter whence it came, felt that under his present circumstances it would be an absurd Quixotism to refuse to apply what the very Providence to whom he had anew consigned himself seemed to have sent to his aid. And it placed him, too, beyond the offer of all pecuniary assistance from one from whom he could least have brooked ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... women an absolute chastity, and refuses to condone the least lapse, either before or after marriage. But toward men it is indulgent. It readily overlooks a plenteous seed of wild oats, and would regard it as the sheerest Quixotism to judge the bridegroom by the same standard of purity as it does the bride. It is easy enough, and perhaps also legitimate, to exclaim with Bjoernson that this is all wrong, and that a man has no right to ask any more than ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Enid herself, she honestly thought so little of these same scruples that she felt inclined to accuse Vane of a Quixotism which, from her point of view at least, was entirely unwarrantable. It was, therefore, quite impossible for her to first suggest that they should meet after a parting during which they might have unconsciously reached what was to be the crisis of ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... horror on his face at such an unlady-like proceeding. The story would be an ignominious one for Hawthorne, if it were credible, but there is no occasion for our believing it until some tangible evidence is adduced in its support. There was no element of Quixotism in his composition, and it is quite as impossible to locate the identity of the person whom Hawthorne is supposed to ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... explosion; outbreak, outburst; agony. violence &c. 173; fierceness &c. adj.; rage, fury, furor, furore[obs3], desperation, madness, distraction, raving, delirium; phrensy[obs3], frenzy, hysterics; intoxication; tearing passion, raging passion; anger &c. 900. fascination, infatuation, fanaticism; Quixotism, Quixotry; tete montee[Fr]. V. be impatient &c. adj.; not be able to bear &c. 826; bear ill, wince, chafe, champ a bit; be in a stew &c. n.; be out of all patience, fidget, fuss, not have a wink of sleep; toss on one's pillow. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... herself at that moment. "But, for your own sake, it would have been better he should have abstained from such an act of Quixotism." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the project occasioned when it was first broached. Some said no railroad ever could be built on the river's edge; and, if you should build one, the enormous expense incurred would make it forever unprofitable. It seemed then the height of Quixotism to lay an expensive track where the river offered a free way to all. Property holders, whose property was to be greatly benefited, fought the railroad company with unusual spirit and persistence. But the railroad came, nevertheless, and needs no ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... like the responsibility, in the first place, and the inactivity, in the second. When I am forty or fifty years old, I shall like a command better. Others seem to look upon me now as a boy, capable of any sort of quixotism, however prudent I may be, and point at me as one who has been made a commander of a steamer by influence at court. There is a vacancy at the present time on board of the Bellevite, for the second lieutenant will be compelled to resign ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... alone is of worth in both books and men, the soul, would be no more. So, as it seemed they must die either way, all the condemned chose death before dishonour. Several distinguished folios who, in a quixotism of heart, had flirted with the socialistic leaders when their schemes were but propaganda, and equality had not yet been so rigorously defined, now bitterly repented their folly, and did their best in heading a rally against their foes. That, however, was soon ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... madness has made you more than once speak to me of Quixotism as the new religion. And I tell you that this new religion you propose to me, if it hatched, would have two singular merits. One that its founder, its prophet, Don Quixote—not Cervantes—probably wasn't ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... her pretty legend has quite disappeared in the light of these recent memoirs, and the historians and commentators no longer attempt to defend her against even the abominable stories which Barras tells of her. "It would be Don-quixotism to deny them," says M. Gustave Larroumet, among others; "the Josephines prefer the Barras to ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton |
