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Don Quixote   /dɑn kihˈoʊti/   Listen
Don Quixote

noun
1.
The hero of a romance by Cervantes; chivalrous but impractical.
2.
Any impractical idealist (after Cervantes' hero).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Don Quixote" Quotes from Famous Books



... this: "The Celts fight for glory, the Teutons for plunder." Instead of plunder, let us say material advantage; they knew why they were fighting, and went to get it. But the Celtic military laws—Don Quixote in a fit of extravagance framed them! There must be no defensive armor; the warrior must go bare-breasted into battle. There are a thousand things he must fear more than defeat or death—all that would make the glory of his soul seem less to him. He must make fighting his business, because ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... included, it is said, no less than one hundred figures, whilst a no less ambitious subject than Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered" was deemed of sufficient merit to be exhibited on the walls of the Royal Academy. Other pictorial subjects were taken from "Don Quixote," "Waverley," "The Tempest," etc., besides which he executed numerous portraits and miniatures. These efforts, however, do not appear to have been sufficiently remunerative to encourage him to continue them, and after a time he resigned ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... breathed Newmark softly to himself. "Don Quixote and the windmills!" Then he added vindictively, "The old fool!" although, of course, the drive ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... we used to call him an incurable Don Quixote?" she asked. "And now he has become so different that at times it makes me smile to think of him as he was when I first knew him. I suppose it's better so, it's more normal. He used to be what Uncle Cyrus called 'flighty,' bent on ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... veracity, and dignity withal, which in many ways appeals to one. The good Alcott: with his long, lean face and figure, with his gray worn temples and mild radiant eyes; all bent on saving the world by a return to acorns and the golden age; he comes before one like a kind of venerable Don Quixote, whom nobody can ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... of Shakespeare is revered in no English seaport. Wiseacre should hie him to Cadiz on the 23rd of April, when the birth of Cervantes is celebrated, for in spite of intestine broils, Spaniards are true to the worship of the author of "Don Quixote," and his no less immortal attendant, whom Gandalin, friend to Amadis of Gaul, affectionately ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... on, during long days and restless nights, our Don Quixote journeyed—for was not Paul like that noble knight, endeavouring to recall a long dead past unto life? After all, there was only one Dulcinea del Tobosa—and she was still, and ever would be, the most beautiful ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous

... of the war] the French, as England's trusty henchmen, obediently repeat what England tells them. If Don Quixote rides at the windmills, Sancho Panza must keep pace with him.—PROF. W.V. BLUME, D.D.M., ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... of a German story, to discover by what route the vanquished lion was growling his way to his den. With a hundred irregular horse, furnished him by Osman Aga, he set out on a foray beyond Jordan; and we do not wonder his two friends, Captain Lane, a Prussian edition of Don Quixote, and Mr Hunter, who has written an excellent account of his expedition to Syria, besides his old Beyrout friend Giorgio, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... If ever there was a curious and touching sight it is that of this little creature setting out upon the conquest of the world. As yet he knows neither doubt nor fear, and opens his heart fully. There is something of Don Quixote about a baby. He is as comic as the Knight, but he has also ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... comedy "The Revizor," where he stigmatizes the abuses of administration, and "Dead Souls," that classic work which de Voguee judges worthy of being given a place in universal literature, between "Don Quixote" and "Gil Blas," and which, in a series of immortal types, flagellates the moral emptiness and the mediocrity of life in high Russian society at ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... at first sight were mutual, or to be conciliated by kind offices; if the fondest affection were not so often repaid and chilled by indifference and scorn; if so many lovers both before and since the madman in Don Quixote had not 'worshipped a statue, hunted the wind, cried aloud to the desert'; if friendship were lasting; if merit were renown, and renown were health, riches, and long life; or if the homage of the world ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... sun had risen above the hill beneath whose shade they rested, and the opposite side of the valley sparkled in light. It was a cheerful scene. 'I have a passion for living in the air,' said Herbert; 'I always envied the shepherds in Don Quixote. One of my youthful dreams was living among mountains of rosemary, and drinking only goat's milk. After breakfast I will read you Don Quixote's description of the golden age. I have often read it until the tears came into ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... the Rio Pecos, years ago, an attempt at founding a settlement was made by a number of hardy and daring New Englanders, whose leader was a sort of Don Quixote, who traveled hundreds of miles, passing by the richest land, the most balmy climate, where all were protected by the strong arm of law, for the sake of locating where the soil was only moderate, the climate no better, and where, it may ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)

... Grey Friars;" and he quoted sentences from the Latin Grammar, apropos of a hundred events of common life, and with perfect simplicity and satisfaction to himself. Besides the above-named books, the Spectator, Don Quixote, and Sir Charles Grandison formed a part of his travelling library. "I read these, sir," he used to say, "because I like to be in the company of gentlemen; and Sir Roger de Coverley, and Sir Charles Grandison, and Don Quixote are the finest gentlemen in the world." And when we asked him his opinion ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... n't say looked through.—-But I did n't come to talk about that. I read in one of your books that when Sydenham was asked by a student what books he should read, the great physician said, 'Read "Don Quixote."' I want you to explain that to me; and then I want you to tell me what is the first book, according to your idea, that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... her Conrad—the Princesse Fleur de Marie (of Rudolstein and the Mysteres de Paris) was sadly ogling out of the bars of her convent cage, in which, poor prisoned bird, she was moulting away—Dorothea of Don Quixote was washing her eternal feet:—in fine, it was such an elegant gallery as became a gallant lover of the sex. And in Sibwright's sitting-room, while there was quite an infantine law library clad in skins of fresh new born calf, there was a tolerably large collection of classical ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... That he was fighting for an apparently defunct cause seemed to make no difference to him. Perhaps Old Hosie had spoken more wisely than he had intended when he had once sarcastically remarked that Bruce was "a cross between a bulldog and Don Quixote." Certainly the qualities of both strains were now in evidence. He sprang instantly into the campaign, and by the power and energy of his speeches and of his editorials in the Express, he fairly raised his ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... Seth cursed them, checking such of them off by name as he recognized, setting them down in his memory for the vengeance he declared he would return speedily and exact. There he stood, like Don Quixote in his cage, his red eye to the hole, swearing as terribly as any man that marched in that hard-boiled ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... Peage de Rousillon, although the only place in the neighbourhood at which we could have slept in any comfort, somewhat resembled, in its general style, those recorded in Don Quixote, and afforded similar adventures. In the midst of our supper, (which was by no means a bad one of the kind), in burst a fat German woman in a transport of fury, who thought herself ill-used in the allotment of the rooms; squabbling in a very discordant key ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... burning), for the purpose of being set right, but we were either disregarded or not heard. A horrid squalling of cats, from the tops of the houses and dark corners, saluted our ears, and I thought of the night arrival of Don Quixote and his squire at Toboso, and their vain search amongst the deserted streets for the palace of Dulcinea. At length we saw light and heard voices in a cottage at the other side of a kind of ditch. Leading the horses over, we called ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... an idea which was probably erroneous—but that does not matter—an untangible thought. One cannot help admiring him, with a mixture of pity in one's admiration, something like what one feels for Don Quixote. Such a gentleman as he was too! I shall never forget the refined and simple hospitality he showed to me ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... drama. The statement is absolutely true and wholly unimportant. A play can exist without anything that can be called character, but not without some sort of action. This is implied in the very word "drama," which means a doing, not a mere saying or existing. It would be possible, no doubt, to place Don Quixote, or Falstaff, or Peer Gynt, on the stage, and let him develop his character in mere conversation, or even monologue, without ever moving from his chair. But it is a truism that deeds, not words, are the demonstration and test of character; wherefore, from time ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... Don Quixote and Hamlet are sleeping, And Faust is stirring the fire. But the fourth is a stranger with a face Starred with ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... dwelling were turned, and from whose heaven-reaching summits he has so often caught the fresh airs of celestial breath. Few of us, indeed, have had the good fortune to add to their vast real estates in Spain any substantial articles of personal property, but one of us, rich in the gifts of Don Quixote's land, has actually a piece of plate, a silver punch bowl, which at times, when filled, has, I doubt not, given him assurance of undisputed rights in the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... Rhaeteum, famed for the sepulchre of Ajax. While I viewed these celebrated fields and rivers, I admired the exact geography of Homer, whom I had in my hand. Almost every epithet he gives to a mountain or plain, is still just for it; and I spent several hours here in as agreeable cogitations, as ever Don Quixote had on mount Montesinos. We sailed next night to the shore, where 'tis vulgarly reported Troy stood; and I took the pains of rising at two in the morning to view cooly those ruins which are commonly shewed to strangers, and which the Turks call Eski ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... reading, and for a man of his limited means, possessed a good collection of books; a considerable number of the volumes of Bohn's Standard Library as well as Boswell's Life of Johnson, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Butler's Hudibras, Bailey's Festus, Gil Blas, Don Quixote, Pilgrim's Progress, the Arabian Nights, Shakespeare, most of the poets from Chaucer down; and of novels, Bulwer Lytton's, Scott's, Dickens' and Thackeray's. These are the books I best remember, but there were others of classic fame, and I read them all; but not, ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... quixotic we do not necessarily think of the original Don Quixote in the novel of the great Spanish writer, Cervantes. Don Quixote was always doing generous but rather foolish things, and the adjective quixotic now describes this sort of action. A quite different character, the Jew in Shakespeare's play, "The Merchant of Venice," ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill

... the door of his box, I was astounded to see slouching lazily in a corner with eyes closed, the nigh hip dropped low, a horse that at first glance appeared to be Don Quixote's Rosinante reincarnate, a gigantic "crow-bait" with a head as long and coarse as an eighteen-hand mule's, an under lip pendulous as a camel's dropping ears nearly long enough to brush flies off his nostrils, with such an ingrowing concavity of under jaw ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... chilly. She separated herself from her companions, and crossed the room to where I stood. Her face was radiant with devout simplicity. To a soul so pure and brave and feminine may I never be guilty of applying a hard and technical criticism! He is little to be envied who reads Don Quixote's assault upon the windmills as a chapter of mad buffoonery. An ideal knight, without fear or reproach, subject to disaster and ridicule, august from his faith in God and the manly consecration of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... too formidable to us not to have a cognomen, and, like that of a knight of old, it was taken from the most remarkable part of his dress, being a pair of old green livery breeches, which was the principal part of his clothing; for, like Pentapolin, according to Don Quixote's account, Green-Breeks, as we called him, always entered the battle with bare arms, legs, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... an excessive flow of spirits, and had it now, was, in his days of absconding, known by the name of M'Cruslick[499], which it seems was the designation of a kind of wild man in the Highlands, something between Proteus and Don Quixote; and so he was called here. He made much jovial noise. Dr. Johnson was so delighted with this scene, that he said, 'I know not how we shall get away.' It entertained me to observe him sitting by, while ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... interest in what they say. He has bent his long Don Quixote carcase down in the shadow, and outstretched the lean neck that looks as if it were braided with violin strings. There is something on the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... day, who assailed him upon such little discrepancies and inaccuracies as are apt to cloud the progress even of a mind like his, when the evening is closing around it. "It is quite a common thing," says Don Quixote, "for men who have gained a very great reputation by their writings before they were printed, quite to lose it afterwards, or, at least, the greater part."—"The reason is plain," answers the Bachelor Carrasco; "their ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... already indicated, there may be more than one dominant element; for instance, two or more principal characters in a novel or play—Lord and Lady Macbeth, Sancho and Don Quixote, Othello and Desdemona, Brand and his wife. In this case, there must be either subordination among them, a hierarchical arrangement; or else reciprocity or balance, as in the illustrations cited, where it is difficult to tell which is ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... see a well-used copy of some classic English, French, Spanish, or Italian author, either prose or poetry, which he would read with equal zest and attention, as his pencil-marks in such volumes even now attest. As for "Don Quixote", and "Gil Blas," I really think he knew them almost by heart, in the originals. He was also very fond of Tacitus, Cicero, and Demosthenes, from all of whom, as well as the other leading classics, but especially the two latter, he could quote ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... Crusoe," and "Gulliver's Travels" were all written by men of the British Isles, but our fourth book, "Don Quixote," was written by a Spaniard named Cervantes. He was a soldier part of his life and as valiant a fighter as his own hero. For five years he was a prisoner of war; he was poor and sick and in one trouble after another; but he was always brave and cheerful and good-humored. In his day, the Spaniards ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... Sancho Panza beaten to a frazzle," Jack said. "Sancho was fat and unresourceful; even stupid. Fancy him broiling a quail on a spit! Fancy what a lot of trouble Firio could have saved Don Quixote de la Mancha! Why, confound it, he would have spoiled ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... title-page, Joseph Andrews is declared to be "written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes," and there is no doubt that, in addition to being subjected to an unreasonable amount of ill-usage, Parson Adams has manifest affinities with Don Quixote. Scott, however, seems to have thought that Scarron's Roman Comique was the real model, so far as mock-heroic was concerned; but he must have forgotten that Fielding was already the author of Tom Thumb, and that Swift had written the Battle of the Books. Resemblances—not ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrick Knickerbocker,' has perhaps shaken as many sides and helped digest as many dinners as almost any book since Cervantes gave the world his account of the adventures of his knight Don Quixote, and yet this great historical work hints but a part of that picture, though doubtless greatly improved by the author's delicate touches, which would pass before us in a procession illustrating two centuries of New York's history. Using such hints, the reader ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... produced the largest family of immortal children. Those of whom it can be said that they have really added a new type to the fictitious world are indeed few in number. Cervantes is in the front rank of all imaginative creators, because he has given birth to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Richardson's literary representatives are far indeed below these; but Richardson too may boast that, in his narrower sphere of thought, he has invented two characters that have still a strong vitality. They show all the weaknesses inseparable from the age and country ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... captain of a band of outlaws on condition that they "do no outrages on silly women or poor passengers", and the outlaws reply that they "detest such vile, base practices."[24] He had also read, in 'Don Quixote', of the high-toned robber, Roque Guinart, who had more of compassion, in his nature than cruelty. Cervantes makes Roque comment thus upon his mode of life: "Injuries which I could not brook and thirst for revenge first led me into it contrary to my nature; for the savage ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... love affairs are the same. This sentence assumed that they are all the same. To Eugene, the poet living in a world of imagination and abhorring reality, Candida was what Dulcinea was to Don Quixote. G.B.S.] ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... wenn man in dem ersten Auftritte den Helden in der Wiege, weiter hin als einen Knaben, hernach als einen Jngling, Mann, Greis, und zuletzt gar im Sarge vorstellen wollte: Wie Cervantes solche thrichte Schauspiele an seinen spanischen Poeten im Don Quixote ausgelachet hat. Oder wie ist es wahrscheinlich, dass man es auf der Schaubhne etlichemal Abend werden sieht, und doch selbst, ohne zu essen oder zu trinken, oder zu schlafen, immer auf einer Stelle sitzen bleibt? Die besten Fabeln sind also diejenigen, ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... a jeering, jibing letter. "So you have gone and done as I prophesied, after all your wrath on the moor, and preciseness at Hurlton. But, first, you were as silly as possible, and wanted to revive the Middle Ages, which was quite in Don Quixote's tone; you to pine and die, and he to shoot himself (as violent deaths are hereditary), or addict himself to loose living and destruction. Then, when he loses his money, and in common sense you may both think better of it, shake hands and go your several ways; ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... can sketch his portrait at a dash. Imagine to yourself a Don Quixote of eighteen; a Don Quixote without his corselet, without his coat of mail, without his cuisses; a Don Quixote clothed in a woolen doublet, the blue color of which had faded into a nameless shade between lees of wine and a heavenly azure; face long and brown; high cheek bones, a sign of sagacity; ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... woman's; moreover, every personage great or small, heroic or comic, in Homer—whose poems he made it a matter of conscience to read once every four years—Plautus, Suetonius, Plutarch, Tacitus, and Lucian, down through Boccaccio and Don Quixote, which he knew by heart and from the living Spanish, to Joseph Andrews, the Spectator, Goldsmith and Swift, Miss Austen, Miss Edgeworth, and Miss Ferrier, Galt and Sir Walter,—he was as familiar with, as with David Crockat the nailer, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... "Tales of my Landlord": why so entitled, excepting to introduce a quotation from Don Quixote, it is difficult to conceive: for Tales of my Landlord they are not, nor is it indeed easy to say whose tales they ought to be called. There is a proem, as it is termed, supposed to be written by Jedediah Cleishbotham, the schoolmaster ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... will see, Arab ideas of "fun" and practical jokes are of the largest, putting the Hibernian to utter rout, and comparing favourably with those recorded in Don Quixote. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... He was born July 21, 1664, according to some, at Winburn, in Dorsetshire, of I know not what parents; others say, that he was the son of a joiner of London: he was, perhaps, willing enough to leave his birth unsettled[1], in hope, like Don Quixote, that the historian of his actions might ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... his travels. 'Pray,' said he to me (seizing me by the button) in the Coliseum, 'What do you think is the highest order of literary composition?' 'Why, an epic, I fancy,' said I; 'or perhaps a tragedy, or a great history, or a novel like Don Quixote.' 'Pooh!' quoth Barabel, looking important, 'there's nothing so high in literature as a good book of travels;' then sinking his voice into a whisper and laying his finger wisely on his nose, he hissed out, 'I have a quarto, sir, in ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... by Master Pedro's words, and said to him, "Don't weep and lament, Master Pedro; you break my heart; let me tell you my master, Don Quixote, is so catholic and scrupulous a Christian that, if he can make out that he has done you any wrong, he will own it, and be willing to pay for it and make it good, and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... wig'—where did Richardson discover so much gallantry and humanity, so much romance and so much fact, such an abundance of the heroic qualities and the baser veracities of mortal nature? Lovelace is, if you except Don Quixote, the completest hero in fiction. He has wit, humour, grace, brilliance, charm; he is a scoundrel and a ruffian, and he is a gentleman and a man; of his kind and in his degree he has the right Shakespearean quality. Almost as perfect in her way is ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... bent and kissed Christine's hand, very solemnly and tenderly, as some battered, comical Don Quixote might have done before setting out on a last fantastic quest. And presently Robert heard him patter down the narrow stairs and over the cobbles to the ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... been chief purveyor of comic opera to his generation, and for so ideal a work as "Robin Hood," and such pleasing constructions as parts of his other operas ("Don Quixote," "The Fencing Master," "The Highwayman," for instance), one ought to be grateful, especially as his music has always a certain elegance and ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... passing pageant, where we should sit as unconcerned at the issues, for life or death, as at the battle of the frogs and mice. But, like Don Quixote, we take part against the puppets, and quite as impertinently. We dare not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme out of which our coxcombical moral sense is for a little transitory ease excluded. We have not the courage to imagine ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... joking me?" thought Tom the next moment. "He must be a little wrong. Got windmills in his head, like Don Quixote." ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... our summer home—to the old house, the broad piazza, the high-backed chairs, and the blue china. The clump of cinnamon roses across the way is one mass of spicy bloom, and soon its fragrance will be mingled with that of new-mown hay. There is nothing new about the place but Don Quixote, the great handsome English mastiff. Do you know the mastiff—his lion-like shape, his smooth, fawn-colored coat, his black nose, and kind, intelligent eyes, their light-hazel contrasting with the black markings around them? If you do, you must ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... conjecture soon appeared groundless, inasmuch as no ships of any kind whatever were afterwards employed on that service. A third sort swore, that no other cause could be assigned for this undertaking than that which induced Don Quixote to attack the windmill. A fourth class (and that the most numerous, though, without doubt, composed of the sanguine and malicious), plainly taxed this commander with want of honesty as well as sense; and alleged that he ought to have sacrificed private pique to the interest of his ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... Mambrino, two Saracens of great valour, had each a golden helmet. Orlando Furioso took Almonte's, and his friend Rinaldo that of Mambrino. "Orlando Furioso," Canto I, St. 28. And readers of "Don Quixote" may remember how the knight argued with Sancho Panza that the barber's bason was the helmet of Mambrino.—"Don Quixote," pt. I, book 3, ch. 7.—W. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... unless it were to impose upon the connoisseurs of miracles, as is sometimes practised upon the connoisseurs of Queen Anne's farthings, and collectors of relics and antiquities; or to render the belief of miracles ridiculous, by outdoing miracle, as Don Quixote outdid chivalry; or to embarrass the belief of miracles, by making it doubtful by what power, whether of God or of the devil, any thing called a miracle was performed. It requires, however, a great deal of faith in the devil ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... unexpected wrench and plunge me into unhappiness. One evening I came home from a long talk with Nancy that had left us both wrought up, and I had entered the library before I heard voices. Maude was seated under the lamp at the end of the big room reading from "Don Quixote"; Matthew and Biddy were at her feet, and Moreton, less attentive, at a little distance was taking apart a mechanical toy. I would have tiptoed out, but Biddy ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... which was afterwards garrisoned by the knights of St John. The townsfolk contend that the great Cervantes was a native of Alcazar; and, although this claim must be disallowed, much of the action of his masterpiece, Don Quixote, takes place in the neighbourhood. El Toboso, for instance, a village 12 m. E.N.E. [pop. ( 1900) 1895], was the home of the Lady Dulcinea del Toboso; Argamasilla de Alba (3505), 22 m. S.E., is declared by tradition to be the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Count Leopold Ferri died at Padua, leaving a library entirely composed of works written by women, in various languages, and this library amounted to nearly 32,000 volumes. We will not hazard any conjecture as to the proportion of these volumes which a severe judge, like the priest in Don Quixote, would deliver to the flames, but for our own part, most of these we should care to rescue would be the works of French women. With a few remarkable exceptions, our own feminine literature is made up ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... there is no friendship in love and in politics. Do you think I like this wretched August of Poland? No! I am sure you don't. But I must go with him through thick and thin, for my country, for Russia. He who cannot sacrifice his little humours and passions for his country is a Don Quixote, like Charles the Twelfth. This fool, with his mad hatred against August and myself, has worked for Sweden's overthrow and Russia's future. But that this Christian dog should incite the Turks against ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... liberally awarded was also richly merited. Mr. Collier quotes from Edmund Gayton, an author who avowedly "wrote trite things merely to get bread to sustain him and his wife," and who published, in 1654, "Festivous Notes on the History of the renowned Don Quixote," a curious account of the behaviour of our early audiences at certain of the public theatres. "Men," it is observed, "come not to study at a playhouse, but love such expressions and passages which with ease insinuate themselves into their capacities.... ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... with youth's generous worship of all such fantastic nonsense. You should have seen his enthusiasm and heard all the things he said. Why, to encounter such a whimsical fellow as myself in this unimaginative age was like meeting a fairy prince, or coming unexpectedly upon Don Quixote attacking the windmill. I offered him the post of Sancho Panza; and indeed what would he not give, he said, to leave all and follow me! But then I reminded him that he had already found his ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... advanced in life, was a very cheerful companion, and one of the most enlightened Spaniards I have met with in California. He piqued himself a little on his literary acquirements, and mentioned having read three books besides Don Quixote and Gil Blas, whilst, as he assured me in confidence, the rest of his countrymen here had hardly ever seen any other book than the Bible. Marco had grown grey in the mission: on account of his usefulness, he had been in many respects better treated than most of the Indians: he spoke ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... and life. There are men and women in books, who seem more really alive to us than men and women who have lived and died—Richardson's Clarissa, Chenier's Camille, the Delia of Tibullus, Ariosto's Angelica, Dante's Francesca, Moliere's Alceste, Beaumarchais' Figaro, Scott's Rebecca the Jewess, the Don Quixote of Cervantes,—do we not owe these ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... of light, who slays the demon. And—remembering what Scribe said about the fewness of dramatic types—I believe we are warranted in asserting that all the stories of lovely women held in bondage by monsters, and rescued by heroes who perform wonderful tasks, such as Don Quixote burned to achieve, are derived ultimately from solar myths, like the myth of Sigurd and Brynhild. I do not mean to say that the story-tellers who beguiled their time in stringing together the incidents which make up these legends were conscious of their solar character. ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... digresses to 'my passion for Miss W——t,' of whom, he assures his friend, he is 'excessively fond, so don't be surprised if your grave, sedate, philosophic friend who used to carry it so high, and talk with such a composed indifference of the beauteous sex, should all at once commence Don Quixote for his adorable Dulcinea.' We catch sight of him, at eighteen, going on the northern circuit with his father and Lord Hailes. There, by the advice of an Edinburgh acquaintance, Love, an old actor at Drury Lane, but ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... the worst had not arrived! Twice she had tried to escape from this enforced pilgrimage, but had failed utterly. Jim had brought her back by brute force. She became aware of the difficulties that faced her. She was his wife—his property. Had any modern Don Quixote felt like rescuing a beautiful woman in distress, he might well have hesitated at sight of the husband. As civilization was left behind so the hope of ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... country,—unseen, but felt, and always ready to crush the acquirements of existing civilization,—the mob came out from the underground world; criminal hands let the mob on the streets. Weak and shaky fingers unlocked the trap; a magnificent gesture of an ignorant Don Quixote invited the spies, the thieves, the murderers "to make ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... may be, to execute, amid the confusion of a general hubbub, whatever designs they may have against your personal safety. Black-fishers, poachers, and smugglers are a sort of gentry that will not be much checked, either by your Quaker's texts, or by your chivalry. If you are Don Quixote enough to lay lance in rest, in defence of those of the stake-net, and of the sad-coloured garment, I pronounce you but a lost knight; for, as I said before, I doubt if these potent redressers of ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... In Cervantes' "Don Quixote," Sancho Panza, the squire to the "knight of the metaphysical countenance," tells a story of a gentleman who had asked a countryman to dine with him. The farmer was pressed to take his seat at the head of the table, and when he refused out ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... Don Quixote de la U.V.M., Knight of the patent-leather gaiters, terrible in his bright rectangular cuirass of tin (once a tea-chest), and his glittering harpoon; his doughty squire, Sancho Panza; and a dashing young lady, whose tasteful riding-dress of black ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... to the other of the faces on the other side of the table. He was in every way a remarkable contrast to his employer, and a painter in search of a subject might have been tempted to take the pair as models for a picture of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... softly, "you risk all because you will not leave a young woman friendless among her confreres. It is not wise, monsieur; it is gallant and generous and impulsive, but it is not wisdom. Don Quixote rides no more in ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... . Thank you for the Books, which were all right: except in so far that they were anointed by the oozings of some Rhubarb Jam which Mrs Berry very kindly introduced among them. I am at my Don Quixote again; and really only sorry that I can read it so much more easily this year than last that I shall be all the sooner done with it. Mackerel still come in very slow, sometimes none at all: the dead-calm nights play the deuce with the Fishing, and I see no prospect of change in the weather till ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome

... popularity is then as sudden as it is well grounded,—it is hearty and honest in every mind, but it is based in every mind on a different species of excellence. Such will often be the case with the noblest works of literature. Take Don Quixote for example. The lowest mind would find in it perpetual and brutal amusement in the misfortunes of the knight, and perpetual pleasure in sympathy with the squire. A mind of average feeling would perceive the satirical meaning and force of the book, would appreciate its wit, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... a desk, an old leather chair, and several shelves of books, among them volumes of history and travel, a King James' Bible, Arrian's Epictetus, Sabatier's life of Saint Francis, the Meditations of Antoninus, bound in paper, and a Jervas translation of Don Quixote. Here Mr. Jeminy was at home; in the evening he smoked his pipe, and read from the pages of Cervantes, whose humor, gentle and austere, comforted his mind so often vexed by ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan

... heart with which he stirs up hatred; he is tall, thin, young looking at a distance, old when seen nearer, wrinkled, bewildered, hoarse, flurried, wan, has a wild look in his eyes and gesticulates; he is the Don Quixote of the Mountain. He, also, tilts at windmills; that is to say, at credit, order, peace, commerce, industry,—all the machinery that turns out bread. With this, a lack of ideas; continual jumps from justice to insanity and from cordiality to threats. He proclaims, ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... same age with Lope de Vega, obtained a wider celebrity. Don Quixote, during the life of its ill-requited author, was naturalized in countries where the name of Lope de Vega was not known, and Du Bartas was translated into the language of every reading people. But no writer ever has enjoyed such ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous

... himself for contempt of his fellows by professing love for an abstraction. To set up the love of 'humanity,' in fact, as a governing principle is not only impracticable, but often mischievous. A man does more good, as a rule, by working for himself and his family, than by acting like a 'moral Don Quixote,[157] who is capable of making love for men in general the ground of all sorts of violence against men in particular.' Indeed, there are many men whom we ought not to love. It is hypocrisy to pretend to love ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... pleasure. Still, you are mine, for I am yours; yours, body and soul; what else have I to live for? The dear old Progenitor can't be with us many years longer; and when he is gone there will be nothing left me but to watch over little Miss Butterfly and her Don Quixote of a future husband. A man can't work and slave and compose sonatas for himself alone—the idea's disgusting, piggish, worthy only of Herbert Le Breton; I must do what I can for the little queen, and ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... 1575, that Miguel Cervantes, the future author of 'Don Quixote,' fell into the hands of a Greek renegade Dali Mami by name, captain of a galley of twenty-two banks of oars. Cervantes, the son of a poor but well-descended gentleman of Castile, had served with great distinction ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... writer, Goudouneche, a schoolmaster, and Polino. This last name had struck Louis Bonaparte. "Who is this Polino?" Morny had answered, "An ex-officer of the Shah of Persia's service." And he had added, "A mixture of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza." These prisoners had been placed in Number Six Casemate. Further questions on the part of Louis Bonaparte, "What are these casemates?" And Morny had answered, "Cellars without air or daylight, twenty-four metres ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... Spain, after five years' slavery at Algiers. He returned fired with animosity against the Moors, and filled with ardent sympathy for those Christians still in slavery. Thus his comedy of "El Trato de Argel, Los Banos de Argel," his tale of the Captive in "Don Quixote," and that of the Generous Lover, were not mere literary works, but charitable endeavors to serve the Christian captives, and to excite the public sympathy in their favor. I have dwelt fully on ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... Montagu—Hawkins's translation from Mignot's History of the Turks—the Arabian Nights—all travels or histories or books upon the East I could meet with, I had read, as well as Rycaut, before I was ten years old. I think the Arabian Nights first. After these I preferred the history of naval actions, Don Quixote, and Smollett's novels, particularly Roderick Random, and I was passionate for the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... had. A vile muddy one, to be sure, but poor maids must not be choosers. We were driving home, Mrs. Weston and I, and by Black Horse Spinney we were stopped by two highwaymen. They had just begun to be rude, when out of the mud comes my knight-errant, bold as Don Quixote and as shabby withal, and with a pretty wit too—which is not much in the way of knight-errants, I think. He scared the highwaymen's horses and set them bolting with the one fellow which held them, then he knocked ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... hedge before it, upon which seems to stand a peacock, curiously cut out of thorn. Passing on we came to a place called Pandy uchaf, or the higher Fulling mill. The place so called is a collection of ruinous houses, which put me in mind of the Fulling mills mentioned in "Don Quixote." It is called the Pandy because there was formerly a fulling mill here, said to have been the first established in Wales; which is still to be seen, but which is no longer worked. Just above the old mill there is a meeting of streams, the Tarw from ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... 1613, three years before the death of Cervantes. They are all original, and have the air of being drawn from his personal experience and observation. Ticknor, in his "History of Spanish Literature," says of them, and of the "Impertinent Curiosity," inserted in the first part of Don Quixote:— ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... Philosophy Sublimity Solomon Madness C. Lamb Faith and Belief Dobrizhoffer Scotch and English Criterion of Genius Dryden and Pope Milton's disregard of Painting Baptismal Service Jews' Division of the Scripture Sanskrit Hesiod Virgil Genius Metaphysical Don Quixote Steinmetz Keats Christ's Hospital Bowyer St. Paul's Melita English and German Best State of Society Great Minds Androgynous Philosopher's Ordinary Language Juries Barristers' and Physicians' Fees Quacks Caesarean Operation Inherited ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... third wife of Philip II, and sister of Charles IX of France.[13] Dark rumors were afloat for some time that she had been poisoned by order of her husband. Among the other treasures in the Hispanic Museum exhibition was the earliest imprint of Cervantes's masterpiece, the immortal "Don Quixote". This was printed in Madrid, in 1605, by ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz

... the story of the Christ, the natives exclaimed 'El Dorado'—the golden. The ignorant sailors and adventurers seized upon the literal meaning, instead of the spiritual one. The time, being that of Don Quixote and of the Inquisition, accounts for the childish credulity on one side and the unparalleled ferocity on the other. The search for El Dorado, whether it was believed to be a fabulous country of gold, or an inaccessible mountain, or a lake, or a ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... rangers: quarrel with each other: grumble at him. For the truth is, he demands of them too high a standard of thought and purpose. He is often a whole heaven above them in the hugeness of his imagination, the nobleness of his motive; and Don Quixote can often find no better squire than Sancho Panza. Even glorious Sir Richard Grenvile makes a mistake: burns an Indian village because they steal a silver cup; throws back the colonisation of Virginia ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... really having the actual work in which the character appears in mind. Of this book Chesterton says 'the public has largely forgotten all the Newcomes except one, the Colonel who has taken his place with Don Quixote, Sir Roger de Coverley, Uncle ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... by those of us who are more civilized, how much easier life might be! Indeed, the various trippings on, and endeavors to encircle, this physical stone, raise many phantom stones, and the severity of the fall is just as great when one trips over a stone that is not there. Don Quixote was quite exhausted when he had been fighting the windmills. One recognizes over and over the truth spoken by the little girl who, when reprimanded by her father for being fretful, said: "It isn't ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call

... Doctor's daughter. What a man he was! How he made your father and me fume in the days of '73! Now that all that is so far in the past, I'll say he was a fine fellow. His brain had gone somewhat bad from reading too much, like don Quixote; and he was crazy over music. Most charming manners he had, however. He married a beautiful orchard-girl, who happened to be very poor. He said the marriage was ... for the purpose of perpetuating the species—those were his very words—of having strong, sound, healthy children. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... "despotism of fact" more marked, but simply because he had to name a particular Provencal city. Tartarin is a hunter of lions and charmer of women, a true "produit du midi," as Daudet says, a character of the most extravagant, genial comedy. He is a minimised Don Quixote, with much less dignity but with equal good faith; and the story of his exploits is a little masterpiece of the free fantastic. The Tarasconnais, however, declined to take the joke, and opened the vials of their wrath upon the mocking child of Nimes, who would have ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... Subligny, Amsterdam, 1671, 12mo. An enlarged plate was made after this one, to serve as frontispiece to the English version of the same work: "The mock Clelia, being a comical history of French gallantries ... in imitation of Don Quixote," London, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... made a great discovery. Books could be borrowed from other people. One of his schoolmates came to school with a wonderful illustrated copy of "Don Quixote" arranged for children. Keith went into ecstasies over it. The mail-clad figure of the Knight of the Rueful Countenance on the front cover was to him the beckoning guardian of a world of wonders, the very existence ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... his hero Don Quixote pass through all the social strata of his time, so the Hebrew novelist conducts his wanderer, Joseph the orphan, through the nooks and corners of the ghetto. He introduces him to all the scenes of Jewish ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... face, and he set one of his podgy hands on his godson's shoulder. "Now listen to me, Andre," he reasoned. "This is sheer knight-errantry—moonshine, lunacy. You'll come to no good by it if you persist. You've read 'Don Quixote,' and what happened to him when he went tilting against windmills. It's what will happen to you, neither more nor less. Leave things as they are, my boy. I wouldn't have a mischief ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... his intellect is too developed to remain satisfied with what he finds in himself; he feels his weakness, but each self-consciousness is a force where-from results his irony, the opposite of the enthusiasm of Don Quixote.... Don Quixote, a poor man, almost a beggar, without means and relations, old, isolated—undertakes to redress all the evils and to protect oppressed strangers over the whole world. What does it matter to him that his first attempt at freeing the innocent from ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various

... 'Don Quixote!' muttered his father. 'Colonel Gainsborough, I have no doubt, has gone home to his people, whom he ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... thee," said the master, "he is as certainly a he ass as I am Don Quixote and thou Sancho Panza, at least so he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various

... silver- headed cane, for fear that I might lose it! It is true that I often forget umbrellas and walking-sticks in the omnibuses and booksellers' shops. But I have a special reason for wanting to take out with me to-day my old cane with the engraved silver head representing Don Quixote charging a windmill, lance in rest, while Sancho Panza, with uplifted arms, vainly conjures him to a stop. That cane is all that came to me from the heritage of my uncle, Captain Victor, who in his lifetime resembled Don Quixote much more than Sancho Panza, and who loved blows quite ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... Giraffe were making all their preparations looking to their "sallying forth," as the latter termed it, "like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza of old, determined to do wonderful things." Thad saw that they felt as if they knew it all; and he realized that in such a case advice was not desired, so he said nothing about what they ought to take. If they forgot anything, ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter



Words linked to "Don Quixote" :   character, fictional character, idealist, fictitious character, dreamer



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