"Quixotism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that moment. "But, for your own sake, it would have been better he should have abstained from such an act of Quixotism." ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... 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 advocate or apologist ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... thought; now he felt that he would make any sacrifice to rid the Duchessa d'Astrardente of himself, and now again he felt how futile such a sacrifice would be. He was ashamed in his heart, for he was no boy of twenty to be swayed by a woman's look or a fit of Quixotism; he was a strong grown man who had seen the world. He had been in the habit of supposing his impulses to be good, and of following them naturally without much thought; it seemed desperately perplexing to be forced into an analysis of those impulses in order to decide what he should ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... am glad there is a point on which you can't even pretend to stand up for him, or I should have thought you crazed with Quixotism. But I am keeping you when you want to be off to Amy. Never mind Mr. Ready-to-halt; I shall wait till my father comes back. If you want the letter put off you had better give some hopes of—Oh! he is gone, and disinterested ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to find a similar instance of perfect and absolute disinterestedness in the roll of minstrels, from Homer downwards; and, to tell the truth, there does seem a spice of Quixotism mingled with and tinging the pure fervour of the enthusiast. Certain it is, that the Troubadours of yore, upon whose model Jasmin professes to found his poetry, were by no means so scrupulous. 'Largesse' was a very prominent word in their vocabulary; and it really seems difficult to ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... seems the kind of person Basil would like, but he appeared quite pleased. It may have been a little quixotism. All ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... fully as I do; but I don't believe he could stand any more Quixotism from you, Matt, and if you intend to make your marriage a preliminary to getting your father-in-law into State's prison, you may be very sure your father won't approve ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... kicked himself; that is to say, he wanted to, and thought it rather a pity he couldn't, and publicly, at that. For the freak he had just indulged was rank quixotism, something which had as much place in the code of a man of his calling as milk of human kindness in the ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... into a bank, don't belong to Prince Gregoriev. He hasn't asked you for anything that he gave you while you were—in your rightful place. And good Heavens! Haven't you surrendered enough, without the quixotism of returning to him what he doesn't either want or expect?—You might as well try to return him your baby-clothes!—So, if not for your own sake, then for me—for us—for the sake of those that care for you, give yourself, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... 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 coats, cravats, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... spirit of Bayard to the spirit of Bonaparte,[15] helped to change loyalty into license, protection into plunder, truth into treachery, chivalry into selfishness; and, since his time, the purest impulses and the noblest purposes have perhaps been oftener stayed by the devil, under the name of Quixotism, than under any other base name or ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... fussy, and advisory, in his own peculiar free-and-easy fashion; and Mrs. Follingsbee was instructive and patronizing to the very last degree. Lillie had bewailed in her sympathizing bosom John's unaccountable and most singular moral Quixotism in regard to the wine question, and been comforted by her appreciative discourse. Mrs. Follingsbee had a sort of indefinite faith in French phrases for mending all the broken places in life. A thing said partly in French became at once in her view elucidated, ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Polish knight, and cotempory the author of Hudibras. In a tract entitled Religio Vindicata a Calumniis Atheismi, he thus alludes to the spiritual Quixotism which induced Butler to "crack the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... 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 on ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... country are developed not as a matter of taste, but as a matter of profit. The crops which can be raised to best advantage in this region are the crops which without a railroad must rot on the ground. No man can be expected to settle in a new country from pure Quixotism,—and nothing but the railroad would make anything else of his expenditure of energies beyond the needs of self-support. The Plains are the natural pasture of the continent; but they have no natural fascination for the white man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... doctor, smiling in his old school-fellow's face; "the quixotism is on your side in making so big a proposal ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn |
