"Knight-errantry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... among the men of his time for his lifelong fidelity to one woman, for since the days of knight-errantry such devotion has been as rare as it is beautiful. The young lawyer came of Scotch-Irish parentage, and to this blending of blood were probably in part due his deep love and steadfastness. There was rather more of the Irish than of the Scotch in his face, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... her mother, and took to reading romances, which, it seems, were books of knight-errantry, at the close of the chivalric period. These romances were innumerable, and very extravagant and absurd, and were ridiculed by Cervantes, half-a-century afterwards, in his immortal "Don Quixote." Although Spain was mediaeval in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... either through the vent of sensual indulgence, or through that of mere dreaming sentimentalism, was forced to flow forth in the only remaining channel, that of self-consecration to perilous adventures, glorious services, feats of toil and penance. When arms and knight-errantry fell out of fashion, in a more settled age, this force of enthusiasm, no longer flashing forth in warlike emprise, illumined the saloon; the current of feeling, instead of being directed upon the ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Nigel Bruce was pale, but there was firmness in the glance of his bright eye, and a smile unclouded in its joyance on his lip. The frivolous lightness of the courtier, the mad bravado of knight-errantry, which was not uncommon to the times, indeed, were not there. It was the quiet courage of the resolved warrior, the calm of a spirit at peace with itself, shedding its own high feeling and poetic glory over ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... lament that your sylvan diversions should be thus interrupted by the fact that an elderly person like myself, quite old enough to know better, has seen fit to adopt the pursuit of knight-errantry. You need not trouble yourselves about your companion, for I have blown out most of the substance nature intended him to think with. One of you, I regret to observe, is rendered immune by the garb of an order which I consider ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... thought, could this intending visitor be, who was to come, armed with the prerogative to make my stay-at-home father forthwith leave his household goods—his books and his child—to whom he clung, and set forth on an unknown knight-errantry? Who but Uncle Silas, I thought—that mysterious relative whom I had never seen—who was, it had in old times been very darkly hinted to me, unspeakably unfortunate or unspeakably vicious—whom I had seldom heard my father mention, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... knight-errantry Christopher Parish had suffered terrible alternations of hope and despair. For fear of offending Miss Sparkes he did not press for an explanation of the errand on which she had sent him enough that he was again permitted to see her, to ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... down, but Sancho remained on foot to serve him with the cup which was made of horn. Seeing him standing, his master said: "That thou mayest see, Sancho, the good which is in knight-errantry, and how fair a chance they have who exercise it to arrive at honour and position in the world, I desire that here by my side, and in company of these good people, thou dost seat thyself, and be one and the same with me that am thy master ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... all the elements of love, chivalry, and religion were blended together, resembled that of some paladin of romance; as the chimerical enterprises, in which he was perpetually engaged, seem rather to belong to the age of knight-errantry, than to ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... cut shorter by a sudden and very distressing headache; I, therefore, who (from a peculiar nervousness connected with the act of writing) so rarely attempt to discharge my own debts in the letter-writing department of life, find myself unaccountably, I might say mysteriously, engaged in the knight-errantry of undertaking for other people's. Wretched bankrupt that I am, with an absolute refusal on the part of the Commissioner to grant me a certificate of the lowest class, suddenly, and by a necessity not to be evaded, I am affecting the large bounties ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... court of love. A mediaeval institution of chivalry, where questions of knight-errantry, constancy in love, etc., were discussed and for the time ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little park into a by-lane; a vast tract of common land, yellow with furze and undulated with swell and hollow, spreading in front; to their right the dark beechwoods, still beneath the weight of the July noon. Lionel had been talking about the "Faerie Queene," knight-errantry, the sweet impossible dream-life that, safe from Time, glides by bower and hall, through magic forests and by witching eaves in the world of poet-books. And Darrell listened, and the flute-notes mingled with the atmosphere faint and far off, like ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mysteries and terrors. At a single stroke from the arm of the intrepid Genoese the mediaeval superstitions which peopled the unknown seas had fallen like fetters from these daring and adventurous souls. The slumbering spirit of knight-errantry awoke suddenly within their breasts; and when from their frail galleons they beheld with ravished eyes this land of magic and alluring mystery which spread out before them in such gorgeous panorama, they plunged into the glittering waters with waving swords and pennants, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... well,—now who would ever have thought it? One whole duke and six dukelets; why, Sandy, it was an elegant haul. Knight-errantry is a most chuckle-headed trade, and it is tedious hard work, too, but I begin to see that there is money in it, after all, if you have luck. Not that I would ever engage in it as a business, for I wouldn't. No sound and legitimate ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... activities appeared evidences of an infamous plot to drain Canadian traffic southward to United States ports and roads: to others they seemed to be philanthropic endeavours to rescue Western Canada from the clutches of monopoly. They were not, however, due to either political intrigue or knight-errantry, but to the same desire for profit which had led the Canadian Pacific to build up its great system in the western states. Other things being at all equal, it was of course desirable that Canadian traffic should follow Canadian territory to Canadian ports; it was to this end that uncounted ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... Scott read all the fairy tales, eastern stories, and romances of knight-errantry that fell in his way. When he was about thirteen, he and a young friend used to spend hours reading together such authors as Spenser, Ariosto, and Boiardo.[73] He remembered the poems so well that weeks or months afterwards he could repeat whole pages that had ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... that the National Magazine, starting with a splendid flourish of knight-errantry, degenerated into the mere, "let-well-enough-alone" thrift-crier it is.... "'How I Became an Expert Tombstone Salesman' ... 'How I collected Tin Foil After Work-Hours and Added Three Hundred a Year Extra to My Salary ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... domestic tale. But all that was adventurous and romantic I devoured without much discrimination, and I really believe I have read as much nonsense of this class as any man now living. Everything which touched on knight-errantry was particularly acceptable to me, and I soon attempted to imitate what I so greatly admired. My efforts, however, were in the manner of the tale-teller, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... of Spain, what could make the pupils understand better the spirit of knight-errantry, its faults and its qualities, than a recital from "Don Quixote" or from the tale of ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... impatience, dogmatism, and pride of opinion stand at his door-way ready to enter whenever he leaves it unguarded. Then, too, there is no small danger of failing to discriminate between a rational philanthropy, with its adaptation of means to ends, and that spiritual knight-errantry which undertakes the championship of every novel project of reform, scouring the world in search of distressed schemes held in durance by common sense and vagaries happily spellbound by ridicule. He must learn that, although the most needful truth may be unpopular, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in spite of her students, until within thirty years Japan slumbered still in the Knight-time of the Middle Ages, and so long as a man carried about with him continually two beautiful swords he felt it incumbent upon him to use them. The happy days of knight-errantry have passed. These same cavaliers of Samurai are now thankful to police the streets in spectacles necessitated by the too diligent study of German text, and arrest chance disturbers of the public peace for a miserably small salary ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... the tropics, these were the lot of every cavalier who came to seek his fortunes in the New World. It was the reality of romance. The life of the Spanish adventurer was one chapter more—and not the least remarkable —in the chronicles of knight-errantry. ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... politically, are we not inclined, at times, to think those men died in vain? We gained the shadow; have we the substance? We gained an unparalleled prestige for courage, but are the people to-day better morally, socially, and politically? Let the world answer. The days of knight-errantry had their decadence; may not the days of the South's ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... is very just, and is very formidable; and upon the one or other of its horns, has been transfixed every adventurer that has hitherto gone forth on the knight-errantry of speculation. Every man who lays claim to a direct knowledge of something different from himself, perishes impaled on the contradiction involved in the assumption, that consciousness can transcend itself: and every man who disclaims ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... I determined to give up political knight-errantry and to stick to sober business. Very carefully and in the most conservative spirit I took stock of the situation. I was still a couple of years on the right side of fifty, young looking for my age (an advantage), a desirable parti ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... see the species of knight-errantry that still existed in the regions which he had come to visit, but he had no opportunity to put further questions, for the man who was the object of them now joined them, saying with an ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... behind the hall-door, clapped on his hat, grasped his stout oak stick, and telling his housekeeper to let them know, in case his guests should miss him, that he was obliged to go out for ten minutes or so on parish business, forth sallied the stout priest, with no great appetite for knight-errantry, but still anxious to rescue, if so it might be, the distressed princess, begirt with giants and enchanters, at ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... long brutalized on the other side of the channel. In this connection the proud, revengeful and chivalrous natives were had at a sad disadvantage; for then, as to-day, they were characterized by a spirit of knight-errantry, which disdained to ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... short, that mysterious "virtu" by which the Renaissance set such great store. It had the negative value of providing artificial trials for young gentlemen with patrimony and no occupation who might otherwise be living idly on their country estates, or dissolutely in London. Knight-errantry, in chivalric society, had provided the hardships and discipline agreeable to youth; travel "for vertues sake, to apply the study of good artes,"[55] was in the Renaissance an excellent way to keep ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... the confidence and affection he had inspired, so as to gather the remnants of his mission again, we cannot say. At any rate, he consoled himself for the disastrous failure at Natal by setting forth on a fresh scheme of Christian knight-errantry on behalf of the Indians ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... no doubt he would have resented the imputation soundly. On the occasion of this last visit to the shop, he did not stay long, but went away somewhat dazed to find himself the possessor of a ring he did not want and out of pocket just thirty dollars, American. Having come to the conclusion that knight-errantry of that kind was not only profligate but distinctly irritating to his sense of humour, he looked up Mr. Hobbs and arranged for a day's ride ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... ingenious contrivance. But the great Florentine invented neither his stories nor his " plot," if we may so call it. He wrote in the middle of the fourteenth century (1344-8) when the West had borrowed many things from the East, rhymes[FN8] and romance, lutes and drums, alchemy and knight-errantry. Many of the "Novelle" are, as Orientalists well know, to this day sung and recited almost textually by the wandering tale-tellers, bards, and rhapsodists of ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... understanding, as I saw it. And, after all, why not? Understanding of my poor bubbling mind, anyhow, and—Nature's furnishing of young women's minds is a mighty subtle business, not very much more clearly understood to-day than in the era of knight-errantry. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... face and graceful gestures, in the funny instinctive British way tried to place her socially. Was she a lady? It made such a difference. This was the girl for whom Doggie had performed his deed of knight-errantry; the girl whom she proposed to take back to Doggie. For the moment, discounting the uniform which might have hidden a midinette or a duchess, she had nothing but the face and the gestures and the beautifully modulated voice ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... lives of Western pioneers and immigrants has suggested nearly as many stories as the chivalric deeds of knight-errantry. These tales of frontier life are, however, as a rule, characterized by such wildness of fancy and such extravagancy of language that we have often wondered why another Cervantes did not ridicule our border romances ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... little while ago," said he, mustering up courage, with an effort, to speak to this wondrous mass of knight-errantry; "at all events the Diamond-drop, of which I know you are the fragments, told me you were going to some Palace in the ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... think I should make a habit of knight-errantry, if I were you," said Roger. "Not in ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... establish plantations, build and sow, and make the desert valleys laugh with corn? Shall I not have my Spenser with me, to fill me with all noble thoughts, and raise my soul to his heroic pitch? Is not this true knight-errantry, to redeem to peace and use, and to the glory of that glorious queen whom God has given to me, a generous soil and a more generous race? Trustful and tenderhearted they are—none more; and if they be fickle and passionate, will not that very softness of temper, which makes them so easily led ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... for a time tongue-tied in acute distress. This was his first adventure in knight-errantry and he had served before neither as page nor squire. He would have given his head to say the unknown words that might comfort her. All he could do was to pat her on the shoulder in a futile way and bid her not to cry, which, as all the world knows, is the greatest ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... which they now call their own: The Spaniards and French, likewise, improved it into their respective tongues. From its great affinity to the Latin, it was called Romance, a name which the Spaniards still give to their own language. As the first legends of knight-errantry were written in Provencal, all subsequent performances of the same kind, have derived from it the name of romance; and as those annals of chivalry contained extravagant adventures of knights, giants, and ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... the solemn scene upon the white page of the boy's mind. A spirit of religion has breathed through it all, so exalted, so warm, so personal; the passionate mediaeval Christianity which expressed itself in crusades and religious orders and knight-errantry. The cry of the Saviour (Erloesung's Held, Hero of Redemption, the poet characteristically calls him) has rung so piercingly, there seems but one answer from a humanly constituted simple heart: "Did you indeed suffer so much and die for ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... if possible, a little good poetry. . . . Upon the selected matter, I have particular notions. One is, that it should always be a subject. For example, a history of Piracy; in connexion with which there is a vast deal of extraordinary, romantic, and almost unknown matter. A history of Knight-errantry, and the wild old notion of the Sangreal. A history of Savages, showing the singular respects in which all savages are like each other; and those in which civilised men, under circumstances of difficulty, soonest become like savages. A history of remarkable characters, good and bad, in history; ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... be of foolish fashion, O Sir King, The fashion of that old knight-errantry Who ride abroad, and do but what they will; Courteous or bestial from the moment, such As have nor law nor king; and three of these Proud in their fantasy call themselves the Day, Morning-Star, and Noon-Sun, and Evening-Star, Being strong ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... not only what Boiardo did, but what he intended to do; for as its subject is Orlando's love, and knight-errantry in general, so its object was to extol the house of Este, and deduce it from its fabulous ancestor Ruggiero. Orlando is the open, Ruggiero the covert hero; and almost all the incidents of this supposed irregular poem, which, as Panizzi has shewn, is one of the most regular in ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... a long and confidential talk," the young artist continued, "and came to the conclusion that Doctor Oleander was at the bottom of the matter, and that, wherever you were, you were an unwilling prisoner. Of course, to a gentleman of my knight-errantry, that was sufficient to fire my blood. I put lance in rest, buckled on my armor, mounted my prancing charger, and set off to the ogre's castle to rescue the captive maiden! And for the rest, you know it. I came, I ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... that of Lee, appeared to me the finest thing in the collection. There is, however, a picture by Leslie, which his friends insist is the best in the exhibition. It represents the chaplain of the Duke leaving the table in a rage, after an harangue by Don Quixote in praise of knight-errantry. The suppressed mirth of the Duke and Duchess, the sly looks of the servants, the stormy anger of the ecclesiastic, and the serene gravity of the knight, are well expressed; but there is a stiffness in some of the figures which makes them look as if copied ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... personally he had a warm regard. The very honesty of his character, his habit of saying just what he meant (so foreign to the Count's own practice), his ingenuous delight in all that he saw, his modern knight-errantry based upon an absurdly old-fashioned notion of right and wrong and justice and all such stuff as that, these were the very qualities to win the admiration of a man of the world who possessed none of them. Count Sergius said ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... Quixote, seems to have been intended as a burlesque upon the romances of chivalry once so popular in Europe. The hero, Don Quixote, attended by his shrewd and faithful squire, Sancho Panza, rides forth to perform deeds of knight-errantry, but meets, instead, the most absurd adventures. The work is a vivid picture of Spanish life. Nobles, priests, monks, traders, farmers, innkeepers, muleteers, barbers, beggars—all these pass before our eyes as in a panorama. Don Quixote immediately became ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... and who was deeply versed in the Bible, composed a poem, called the 'Morgante Maggiore,' which he recited at the table of Lorenzo de Medici, the great patron of Italian genius. It is a mock-heroic and religious poem, in which the legends of knight-errantry, and of the Popish Church, are turned to unbounded ridicule. The pretended hero of it is a converted giant, called Morgante; though his adventures do not occupy the twentieth part of the poem, the principal personages being Charlemagne, Orlando, and his cousin Rinaldo of Montalban. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... of the nature of a romance of chivalry, the whole interest of the play necessarily turned upon love and honour, those supreme idols of the days of knight-errantry The love introduced was not of that ordinary sort, which exists between persons of common mould; it was the love of Amadis and Oriana, of Oroondates and Statira; that love which required a sacrifice of every wish, hope, and feeling unconnected with itself, and which ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... of your enchanted castle, Thaddeus," returned his friend, "I believe I shall consider my knight-errantry, in being fool enough to trust myself amidst a fray in which I had no business, as one of the ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... that when our gentleman had nothing to do (which was almost all the year round), he passed his time in reading books of knight-errantry, which he did with that application and delight, that at last he in a manner wholly left off his country sports, and even the care of his estate; nay, he grew so strangely besotted with these amusements that he sold many acres of arable land to ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... France. But the boiling valour of these fiery youths was equally difficult to restrain or direct; and, after losing two-thirds of their number in desperate, but irregular, sallies against the Turkish lines, the survivors of this piece of knight-errantry re-embarked for Christendom in January, leaving the heads of their fallen comrades ranged on pikes before the tent of Kiuprili. A stancher reinforcement was received in the spring of 1669, by the arrival of 3000 Lunenburghers, whose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... Knight-errantry, which was a caprice in France and in England, in Spain was a calling. No other country could afford such a field for it, and to no other society was it so well suited. The grave and wise Fernando ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... of the great baronial castles were suggestive of power and glory. To the impressibility of the senses was added the romantic spirit of adventure, which kept the knighthood of Europe in a constant ferment, and for lack of war, burst forth in tournaments, in private feuds, or in the extravagances of knight-errantry. The feudal system, growing up to meet the necessities of conquerors living on conquered territory, and founded on the principle of military service as a condition of land tenure, made of Europe a vast army. The military profession ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... fleshpots, and here is a way out of them. And if the man's nature be noble and sweet and true; if he has hitherto drifted adown the stream of circumstance because his fellows have also drifted; then, with the deepening tides of his passion, the old spirit of knight-errantry descends upon him with its mystic mantle of white samite. And slowly out of this deepening torrent of bewildered impulse and devotion is born a new man—a man with a soul—a man who can dare all things, do all things, endure all things, for the ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... descent of Hugh Capet to this hero of the Saxon woods. In truth, he has been made to some extent the Roland or the Arthur of Saxony, though fancy has not gone so far in his case as in that of the French paladin and the Welsh hero of knight-errantry, for, though he and his predecessor Hermann became favorite characters in German ballad and legend, the romance heroes of that land continued to be the mythical Siegfried and his partly fabulous, partly historical companions of the epical song of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... little man rolled forward, affectionate concern on his great ugly 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 ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... that he failed to choke back the curse quick risen to his lips when the throb of the Mercury's engine came over the crest of the hill. Never was mailed dragon more terrible to the beholder, even in the days of knight-errantry. In an instant his well-conceived project had gone by the board. He saw himself discredited, suspected, a skulking plotter driven into the open, a self-confessed trickster utterly at the mercy of some haphazard question that would lay bare ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... of the world's unconcern fall upon young manhood's unfolding powers. Let us beware how we extinguish the feeblest of youth's idealisms. Let us check not the onset of his knight-errantry. And the world does these things—not purposely, not even knowingly, but thoughtlessly. Many a young man has had his life's work kept back and the ardor of it chilled by rebuff ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... mediaeval throng, Where thou wert bravest, yet the first in ruth, I watch thy votaries by land and sea Armed with thy sacred sign go forth to fight Anew the battle of humanity Beneath the flag of mercy and of right; No holier band a holier realm e'er trod Than this—the world's knight-errantry ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... the genius of Cervantes hurried Don Quixote and Sancho served to moderate the extravagances of knight-errantry. The adventures of Hudibras and Ralpho, undertaken to extinguish the sports and pastimes of the people, aided greatly in staying the hand of fanaticism, which had suppressed all stage plays and interludes as "condemned by ancient heathens, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... is not a man. He is wanting in the highest attributes of humanity. The honor and nobleness of the old "knight-errantry" consisted in defending the innocence of men and protecting the chastity of women against the assaults of others. But the truer and nobler knighthood protects the property and the character, the innocence and the chastity of others ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden |
