"Errant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... side, as had been planned, great supercyclone fans were set up to blow back any errant seed. Fed by vast hydroelectric plants in the Colombian highlands, the noise of their revolving blades drowned out the sounds of the explosions for all those nearby. The oceans became interested participants and enormously ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... days were done, was taking to thorough hard work. He attached himself to his old governess with an enthusiasm that a lad in his teens often conceives for a woman still young enough to be sympathetic, and intelligent enough to guide without ruling the errant fancy of that age. She, too, soon grew very fond of him. It made her strangely happy, this sudden rift of sunshine out of the never-forgotten heaven of her youth, now almost as far ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Launcelot had parted from his fellows at the Castle of Vagon, he rode many days through the forest without adventure, till he chanced upon a knight close by a little hermitage in the wood. Immediately, as was the wont of errant knights, they prepared to joust, and Launcelot, whom none before had overthrown, was borne down, man and horse, by the stranger knight. Thereupon a nun, who dwelt in the hermitage, cried: "God be with thee, best knight in all this world," for she knew the victor for Sir Galahad. ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... them. To give it its most favorable interpretation, it is a sort of crazy counsel of perfection, incompatible with the healthy tenor and contents of human nature, and sure in the end to involve in its errant tentacles not only those who are the avowed objects of its pursuit, but likewise the lawmakers and enforcers themselves. Like all abuses, in its own entrails are the seeds of its destruction. Laws now on our books, if radically ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... obstinate you can be, Fanny, when you think it necessary to dub yourself any one's champion. Don Quixote was not a better knight-errant than you are. But is it not a pity to take up your lance and shield before an enemy is within sight or hearing? But that was ever the ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... head playfully at his servant's grumbling. "Gossip Tristan," he asked, "do you know why I have come to this hovel to-night? I do not walk abroad like a king-errant in mere idleness of mind. I have come to learn what company my lord the Grand Constable keeps." Tristan's shaggy eyebrows arched in surprise as the king continued: "Our good Olivier assures us that our dear Thibaut d'Aussigny has taken it into his head of late to walk the streets by night and ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... against her? With her disfigurement, she had been cheated of her spring, and later, had been set in artificial air to lose six years of her summer; with life still in her, what wonder her autumn gave an errant growth? Inger was better than blacksmiths' wives—a little damaged, a little warped, but good by nature, clever by nature ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... because their hair would soon be gray, and they have exchanged it for tresses of green. Near those willow-trees the princely stranger who has lately occupied the castle will next week give a boating fete, to which I am invited; I suppose you also, courteous Sir, will be present, a knight-errant for distressed damsels? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... Unlike in working then, in shape and show, At his left hand, Saturn he left and Jove, And those untruly errant called I trow, Since he errs not, who them doth guide and move: The fields he passed then, whence hail and snow, Thunder and rain fall down from clouds above, Where heat and cold, dryness and moisture strive, Whose wars all ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... a parcel of strange hobgoblins, covered with long frieze rugs and blankets, hooped round with leather girdles from their cruppers to their shoulders, and their noddles buttoned up into caps of martial figure, like a Knight Errant at tilt and tournament, with his wooden head locked in an iron helmet; one, armed, as I thought with a lusty faggot-bat, and the rest with strange wooden weapons in their hands, in the shape of clyster pipes, but as long almost as speaking trumpets. ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... sloping fields of green painted with daisies, through which, unshackled, the buoyant breeze swept so peacefully. It was an invariable rule, in those days, to troop through the meadows at early morn and, like a young knight-errant, bear home in triumph "Marguerite," the peerless daisy, rescued from the clutches of unmentionable dragons, and now to beam brightly on us for the rest of the day from a neighboring mantel-piece. And it was with great reluctance ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... They called it the Red Basin. But to me, fresh for the sight, it beckoned with fantastic issues. Even the name breathed magic. Wizard spells hovered there; the railroad had not broken them—the cars and locomotives, entering, did not disturb the brooding vastness. A man might still ride errant into those slumberous spaces and discover for himself; might boldly awaken the realm and rule with a princess ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... Knights-Errant may evince interest grave; that Indian Prince Will alternate swell and wince as they struggle; The young Scottish Knight BALFOUR (who looks callow more than dour) Hopes the Silver Knight may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... prince returned to his domains in Novgorod, and under the protection of the throne he rivaled the monarch in splendor and power. Constantin established his capital at Vladimir, about one hundred and fifty miles west of Moscow. The warlike Mstislaf, greedy of renown, with the chivalry of a knight-errant, sought to have a hand in every quarrel then raging far or near. Southern Russia continued in a state of incessant embroilments; and the princes of the provinces, but nominally in subjection to the crown, lived in a state of interminable war. Occasionally they ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... that two errant lords across The block of each came edged, and at sharp cry They charged forthwith, the better man to try. One rode his way, one couched on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... only anxiety was to find her elusive quarters for the strange cruise, to learn whether or not her new knight-errant were alive or dead from the ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... burying the dead and writing their obituaries; making the babes pure with that holy sprinkling which gives them, dying early, to a Christian immortality; launching our thunders upon the bold, softening the hearts of the errant, mingling with our unbending creed the more pliable ethics of worldly graces, and, in a word, walking like Saint John on the savage border of civilization, to thrill the brutal and unlettered with the tidings of one just day to ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... arose in his mind, and mingled itself with his old delusions in a manner which to most Englishmen must seem singular, but which those who know how close was the union between religion and chivalry in Spain will be at no loss to understand. He would still be a soldier; he would still be a knight errant; but the soldier and knight errant of the spouse of Christ. He would smite the Great Red Dragon. He would be the champion of the Woman clothed with the Sun. He would break the charm under which false prophets held the souls of men in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... cramped) than developed: but genius was present, without a doubt, under whatsoever artificial trappings; and Ben Jonson spoke but truth when he said, 'My son Cartwright writes all like a man.' It is impossible to open a page of 'The Lady Errant,' 'The Royal Slave,' 'The Ordinary,' or 'Love's Convert,' without feeling at once that we have to do with a man of a very different stamp from any (Massinger perhaps alone excepted) who was writing between 1630 and 1640. The specific gravity of the poems, so to speak, is ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... her case logic would of course act within a certain range; and as logic is a conscious intellectual process, she became aware that her objective was man. Man—in the abstract. 'Man,' not 'a man.' Beyond that, she could not go. It is not too much to say that she did not ever, even in her most errant thought, apply her reasoning, or even dream of its following out either the duties, the responsibilities, or the consequences of having a husband. She had a vague longing for younger companionship, and of the kind naturally most interesting ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... masters of nothing but compromise, and that little fancy of an inner conspiracy of control within the machine and behind ostensible politics is really on all fours with the wonderful Rodin (of the Juif Errant) and as probable as anything else in the romances ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Rufa from Bononia Rufulus gallants, Menenius' errant lady, she that in grave-yards (You've seen her often) snaps from every pile her meal, When hotly chasing dusty loaves the fire rolls down, She felt some half-shorn corpseman and ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... east or west. He lacked the festive imagination which helps many people under similar circumstances. It did not occur to him to toss up, nor was he aware of the value of turning round three times with his eyes closed and then marching straight before him. Had he been an errant knight, of course his horse would have settled the question; but as it was, he was not a knight and had not a horse. He had a dog, though. He had found Julius in possession of the caretaker at his guardian's house, and had begged her to let ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... people fell down on their knees and cried King Arthur mercy. Mercy shall ye have, said Arthur: here may ye see what adventures befall ofttime of errant knights, how that I have fought with a knight of mine own unto my great damage and his both. But, sirs, because I am sore hurt, and he both, and I had great need of a little rest, ye shall understand the opinion betwixt ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... to play the knight-errant. The "ladye faire" had not needed my help; she neither saw nor heard me; and by the time I arrived upon the ground, she had passed out of sight, and ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... been safe and sheltered in the convent, and her life guarded; and moreover, she understood why her father had always treated her mother as if she were higher than the angels and with the courtesy and gentleness of a knight errant. He had bowed to her slightest wish, and no wonder her mother thought that when he received her request to return to her, and give up his hope, he would surely ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... all truth, the little gray broncho deserved all of Paddy's praise. Scarred from muzzle to pastern by errant bullets, limping slightly on one fore leg, she still had borne her master bravely over weary miles of veldt, into many a skirmish and through the kicking, squealing throngs of her kindred which crowded the Lindley kraal. Long since, Weldon had discovered that the thoroughbred Nig was an ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... lady say that if he took his place in a crowded horse-car, an exhilarating atmosphere seemed to be introduced by his breezy ways. . . . He always preserved his sweetness of disposition, his cheerfulness, his courtesy, his industry, his hope, his ambition. . . . Like a true knight errant, never disheartened by difficulty, never despondent in the face of dangers, always brave, full of resources, confident of ultimate triumph." The student at Johns Hopkins University who knew him best said: "No strain of physical ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... of a deputy-errant, naturally include an introduction to the female prisoners; and Tallien's presence afforded Mad. de Fontenay an occasion of pleading her cause with all the success which such a pleader might, in other times, be supposed to obtain from ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Emile a knight-errant, a redresser of wrongs, a paladin? Shall he thrust himself into public life, play the sage and the defender of the laws before the great, before the magistrates, before the king? Shall he lay petitions before the judges and plead ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... and sore, and altogether too ill to extend his nightly rambles further than the boundaries of the wood. But with renewed health his restlessness returned, and he wandered hither and thither in search of a mate to share his dwelling. A knight-errant among badgers, he sought adventure for the sake of a lady-love whose face ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... deplorable by contrast—especially the shoes, and the way of dressing the hair; we almost came to the conclusion that female beauty when unadorned is adorned the most. It awes and chastens one so! and wakes up the knight-errant inside! even the smartest French boots can't do this! not the pinkest silken hose in all Paris! Not all the frills and underfrills and wonderfrills that M. Paul Bourget ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... ranch. As for my game: thar's a member of my fam'ly escapes this mornin'—comes streamin' over yere, I onderstands—an' I'm in the saddle tryin' to round her up. Gents,' concloods old Glegg, an' he displays emotion, 'I'm simply a harassed parent on the trail of his errant offspring.' ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... who has staked his fortune on the legs of a horse has only to wait a few minutes for the confirmation of his hopes; while a Brigadier, whose bedtime (or even breakfast-time) is at the mercy of an errant platoon, may have to sit up ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... upon a bench, and, breathing in the cool freshness of the dewy lawns, he felt himself assailed by all the passionate expectancy that transforms the soul of youth into the incoherent canvas of an unfinished romance of love. Long ago he had known such evenings, those evenings of errant fancy, when he had allowed his caprice to roam through imaginary adventures, and he was astonished to feel a return of sensations that did not now belong ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... the Oregon tribes, and now come hither to the mountain market of 1835 as knight-errant of the Gospel, pulled up his horse at the edge of the encampment and gazed in sheer amazement. His party—except Whitman, who reined in his horse at his friend's side—passed on and joined the shouting throng. Apparently they conveyed certain news ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... pleased himself often with the thought that somewhere in the world was a woman meant for him—a woman with a mind and soul, as well as flesh. If the waiting seemed long—why should he not be content, since she was waiting, too? He would know her instantly. The slightest errant fancy of doubt would be enough to assure him that she was ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... along with the bonnet rouge and the jargon of the Terror. His bent had ever been for the material and practical: and now that faith in the Jacobinical creed was vanishing, it was more than ever desirable to grapple that errant balloon to substantial facts. Evidently, the Revolution must now trust to the clinging of the peasant proprietors to the recently confiscated lands of the Church and of the emigrant nobles. If all else was vain and transitory, here surely was a solid basis of material interests ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... concerned in should be popular. It was sufficient that it should be impartial and incorruptible. Its tone was to be sober and scholarly, but militant. Rickman gathered that its staff were to be so many knights-errant defending the virtue of the English Language. No loose slip-shod journalistic phrase would be permitted in its columns. Its articles, besides being well reasoned, would be examples of the purity it preached. It was to set its face sternly against ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... I biked. It is not such interesting country here as what we came through in the train—rolling, stoney, with friable red soil, and hard to ride on. Many dusty roads meet at all angles; along these you meet herds of buffalo and cows driven leisurely by boys or men. Some cows, of errant natures, have logs dangling by a rope from their necks amongst their feet; they can't go off very fast or far with the encumbrance. They stir up the dust as they go along, and it falls and lies on the children ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Master Simon; but it was difficult to be enforced in such a motley assemblage. There was a continued snarling and yelping of dogs, and, as fast as it was quelled in one corner, it broke out in another. The poor gipsy curs, who, like errant thieves, could not hold up their heads in an honest house, were worried and insulted by the gentleman dogs of the establishment, without offering to make resistance; the very curs of my Lady Lillycraft bullied them ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... cet oiseau d'bne induisant ma triste imagination au sourire, par le grave et svre dcorum de la contenance qu'il eut: Quoique ta crte soit chue et rase, non! dis-je, tu n'es pas pour sr un poltron, spectral, lugubre et ancien Corbeau, errant loin du rivage de Nuit—dis-moi quel est ton nom seigneurial au rivage plutonien de Nuit. Le Corbeau ...
— Le Corbeau • Edgar Allan Poe
... time to help the tea-kettle. I have some reason to think she was literally an OLD-STAGER, who laughed in her sleeve at my complaisance; so that I have sworn in my secret soul revenge upon her sex, and all such errant damsels of whatever age and degree whom I may encounter in my travels. I mean all this without the least ill-will to my friend the contractor, who, I think, has approached as near as any one is like to do towards accomplishing the modest wish cf the Amatus and ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... sorry a Creature, thou wilt endure any thing for the lucre of her Fortune; 'tis that thou hast a Passion for: not that thou carest for Money, but to sacrifice to thy Leudness, to purchase a Mistress, to purchase the Reputation of as errant a Fool as ever arriv'd at the Honour of keeping; to purchase a little Grandeur, as you call it; that is, to make every one look at thee, and consider what a Fool thou art, who else might pass unregarded amongst ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... native brought a letter from the errant lady addressed to her furious spouse. This missive is (without explaining how he got it) reproduced by an American journalist, T. Everett Harre, in a series of articles, The Heavenly Sinner: "I suggest," runs an extract, "you come to your senses and give me my freedom ... I am ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Company, and that common Vice of the Town, Gaming, soon run out my younger Brother's Fortune: for imagining, like some of the luckier Gamesters, to improve my Stock at the Groom Porter's, I ventur'd on, and lost all. My elder Brother, an errant Jew, had neither Friendship nor Honour enough to support me; but at last being mollified by Persuasions, and the hopes of being for ever rid of me, sent me hither with a small Cargo to seek ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... of witnesses were which they produced before their knight-errant chief-justice, Sir Elijah Impey, who wandered in search of a law adventure, I have laid open to your Lordships. You have now had an account of the scandalous manufacture of that batch of affidavits which was in the budget of Sir Elijah ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... No trifling resources have been left for mere abstract investigation. If meta-physics stands, despite the labors of Stewart, Hamilton, Hegel, Comte, very much where it did when Socrates ran amuck among the casuistical Quixotes of his day, and left the philosophic tilters of Greece, the knights-errant in search of the supreme good, in the same plight with the chivalry of Spain after Cervantes, the science of mind, and particularly mental pathology, has made some steps forward on crutches furnished by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... field, awaiting him, He felt, were she the prize of bodily force, Himself beyond the rest pushing could move The chair of Idris. Yniol's rusted arms Were on his princely person, but thro' these Princelike his bearing shone; and errant knights And ladies came, and by and by the town Flow'd in, and settling circled all the lists. And there they fixt the forks into the ground, And over these they placed the silver wand, And over that the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... rather self-consciously. Bean felt himself a scoundrel—"leading on" a young thing like that who was engaged to another. It was flirting of the most reprehensible sort. But there was his dual nature; a strain of the errant Corsican had ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... virtue; the other softens it again and unbends it into vice. One conduces to the poet's aim (the completing of his work), which he is driving on, labouring, and hastening in every line; the other slackens his pace, diverts him from his way, and locks him up like a knight-errant in an enchanted castle when he should be pursuing his first adventure. Statius (as Bossu has well observed) was ambitions of trying his strength with his master, Virgil, as Virgil had before tried his with Homer. The ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... politics of the times. But the expenditure of enormous energies upon things of secondary and of even tertiary importance, to the neglect of others of prime and lasting interest, is supremely human. He was errant where all men go astray. But the schoolmaster of the nation was abroad, and was training this young man for the work he was born to do. These six months were, therefore, not wasted, for in the university of experience he did ever prove himself an apt scholar. One lesson he had learned, which ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... saints errant had hitherto remained a mystery, and their story had faded from memory; the report of the old tempest-tossed pilot, however, revived this long-forgotten theme; and it was determined by the pious and enthusiastic, that the island thus accidentally discovered, was the identical place of refuge, ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... being forged into a new unity amidst the fires that now blaze throughout the world. In their ardent heat we shall, in God's Providence, let us hope, be purged of faction and division, purified of the errant humors of party and of private interest, and shall stand forth in the days to come with a new dignity of national pride and spirit. Let each man see to it that the dedication is in his own heart, the high purpose of the nation ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... invention." Scoffers will not be slow to find in Volapk and the White Knight's inventions a common characteristic—their fantasticness. Perhaps there really is some analogy in the fact that both inventors had to mount their hobby-horses and ride errant through sundry lands, thrusting their creations on an unwilling world. But the particular kind of white night of which Volapk was born is the nuit blanche, literally "white night," but idiomatically "night ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... a period of strain. She assumed an attitude of very haughty contempt toward the errant pair, devoted herself to Wiggins, and let them coldly alone. From this attitude Wiggins was the chief sufferer: the Terror had the princess and the princess had the Terror; Erebus enjoyed her display of haughty contempt, but Wiggins missed the strenuous life, ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... over what a good knight-errant would do in such case, and then answered, "Tell you what: I'll fight ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... erect and rode his best, feeling like some errant knight of the great Round Table, ready to right the whole world's wrongs. "But what about the horse?" said he. "We can na ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... sought what is technically called the travellers'-room. This is a public room set apart at most inns for the accommodation of a class of wayfarers called travellers, or riders; a kind of commercial knights-errant, who are incessantly scouring the kingdom in gigs, on horseback, or by coach. They are the only successors that I know of, at the present day, to the knights-errant of yore. They lead the same kind of roving adventurous life, only changing the lance for a driving-whip, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... tutor, so she was ready for the entrance examinations, but she had never associated with other girls and didn't know much about them. I can't feel sorry enough for calling her names and imitating her. We had a long talk at Martell's the other night and I am going to be her knight errant from now on." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... builder of the trap was astounded. He laughed aloud at the absurdity. In silence he threw off the rock and lid and seated himself on the edge of the open trap. Captor and captive then gazed at each other with gravity. The errant infant's attire consisted of a calico shirt of gaudy hues, a pair of little moccasins, much frayed, and a red flannel string. This last was tied about his straggling hair, which fell over his forehead like the shaggy mane of a bronco colt and veiled, but could ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... day and the rather pedantic spirit with which classical studies were there pursued. Moreover, he had brought from Europe a new manner, full of the affections of ardent youth, and this he wore without ease in a society highly satisfied with itself; the young knight-errant was therefore subjected to considerable ridicule. A little volume of poetry, translations and original pieces, published in 1823 gave its author no fame. As time passed, and custom created familiarity, his style, personal and literary, was seen to be the outward symbol of a firm resolve ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... maker of the shoes of the spinster aunt when she eloped with the faithless Jingle; "in a po-chay from the 'Blue Lion' at Muggleton," as one of Mr. Wardle's men said; and the discovery of the said shoes led to the identification of the errant pair at the "White Hart" in the Borough. After Sam Weller had described nearly all the visitors staying in the hotel from ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... dream-dazzled youth, striving like a knight-errant for the love of a lady and the glory of conquest, but he was also a born fighter, and in every emergency he had shown himself as able as his ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... choose one yourself," said Aunt Charlotte, as she dived after an errant ball of worsted. "What day will ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... children deserted his wife and the expenses of supporting his family devolved upon them. It would call for little imagination to picture these respectable members of society scrambling to pass laws for the punishment of the errant one and to force him back to his wife and support-producing labor. But, basically, the legal favoritism which has arisen in the past thirty years in America, is probably due to a desire on the part of the employing class to protect ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... an adjoining room with Blanche, who there informed him artlessly of Crombie's consideration and attentiveness in restoring the errant shoes. When they came back Littimer insisted upon having the young man remain a little longer and drink a glass of port with him. Before taking his departure, however, Crombie, who felt free to speak ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... requisite authority for a correct knowledge of those dark and distant times: a great deal of obscurity and conjecture, too, exist as to the actual character of the monarchy,—as to whether, for example, Clovis and his predecessors were real kings, or merely knights errant, and whether their successors were as absolute as the Emperors among the Romans, or more magistrates than sovereigns as among the Germans, all sorts of doubts having been raised and mistiness thrown over these and other important matters ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... the person who picked up the contents of aunt Celia's bag, she said, dimpling in the most distracting manner (that's another thing there ought to be a law against), "Thank you again; you seem to be a sort of knight-errant!" ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... tongue of this errant knight would not be stayed; and his loud musical voice swept over the waters, evidently attracting her notice, and for the first time. She drew back her dark hair, gazing on them for a moment, when she suddenly disappeared. Harrington ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the whole coast of the enemy, as well as any of Homer's heroes ever did, or as Don Quixote or any knight-errant in the world could have done, he returned to Molly, whom he found in a condition which must give both me and my reader pain, was it to be described here. Tom raved like a madman, beat his breast, tore his hair, stamped on the ground, and vowed the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... am like the bold knight-errant, From his castle who would roam, Trusting her, my faithful steward, For a strict account of home; And each day I toil, and hazard All that any man may dare, For a resting-place at even, And the ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... portfolio, ally, money, solo, memento, mosquito, bamboo, ditch, chimney, man, Norman,[17] Mussulman, city, negro, baby, calf, man-of-war, attorney, goose-quill, canon, quail, mystery, turkey, wife, body, snipe, knight-errant,[17] donkey, spoonful, aide-de-camp, Ottoman, commander-in-chief, major-general, pony, reply, talisman, court-martial, father-in-law, court-yard, man-trap, Brahman, journey, Henry, stepson, deer, mouthful, Miss Clark,[18] Mr. Jones, Dr. Brown, Dutchman, ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... the brunt of the inevitable scene. Perry was at the bottom of it she knew—she had answered such summonses often enough before to pre-figure with unerring insight the nature of the event. He had shown his periodical inclination to a fresh affair, his errant fancy had wandered in a particular direction, and Gerty's epicurean philosophy had failed as usual to account for the concrete fact. To Laura the amazing part was not so much Perry's fickleness, which she had brought herself to accept with tolerant aversion, as the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... not be thought as intending anything derogatory to the profession of the law, or to the distinguished members of that illustrious order. Well am I aware that we have in this ancient city innumerable worthy gentlemen, the knights-errant of modern days, who go about redressing wrongs and defending the defenceless, not for the love of filthy lucre, nor the selfish cravings of renown, but merely for the pleasure of doing good. Sooner would I throw this trusty pen into the flames, and cork up my ink-bottle for ever, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... then; for this is the place where we must part like knights errant, that take several ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... hazard. There is an incontestable verity, there is an infallible method of knowing this verity, and by the knowledge of it, those who accept it as a rule may give their will a sovereign power that will make them the masters of all inferior things and of all errant spirits; that is to say, will make them the Arbiters ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... cloth of indigo plushette which now covered the table, made the most congenial refuge conceivable. His thoughts were in exact harmony with everything there, from the Venetian blinds to the portrait of his great-grandmother. The only discordant element was the presence of a few errant bread-crumbs, and happily they ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... deposed, the errant one, seen sliding out of the swinging door, and summoned in a loud, clear voice to come back, had flatly disobeyed and had gone upon his ways 'Grinning at me,' said the aggrieved Mr Gregory, 'like a dashed ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... whipped by those Prussian pigs, we!" He came up to Weiss and grasped him violently by the lapel of his coat. His entire long frame, lean as that of the immortal Knight Errant, seemed to breathe defiance and unmitigated contempt for the foe, whoever he might be, regardless of time, place, or any other circumstance. "Listen to what I tell you, sir. If the Prussians dare to show their faces here, we will kick them home again. You hear ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... are all dying to get married; because they are not. I don't say they wouldn't take an errant knight, or a buccaneer or a Hungarian refugee, but for the ordinary marriages of ordinary people they feel nothing but a pitying disdain. So it is that each one of them in due time marries an enchanted prince ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... your home A destined errant-knight I come, Announced by prophet sooth and old, Doomed, doubtless, for achievement bold, I 'll lightly front each high emprise For one kind glance of those bright eyes. Permit me first the task to guide Your fairy ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... brave knight-errant / receive so courteously That we in nought shall merit / his hate, for strong is he. He is so keen of spirit / he must be treated fair: He has by his own valor / done many ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... quantusque cavo Polyphemus in antro Lanigeras claudit pecudes, atque ubera pressat, Centum alii curva hæc habitant ad littora vulgo Infandi Cyclopes, et altis montibus errant.” Æn. iii. 641. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... discern long vistas of green grass, dotted with yellow immortelles, but as the perspective declined, these all became lost in lightly timbered country. These grassy glades were fair to see, reminding one somewhat of Merrie England's glades and Sherwood forests green, where errant knight in olden days rode forth in mailed sheen; and memory oft, the golden rover, recalls the tales of old romance, how ladie bright unto her lover, some young knight, smitten with her glance, would point out some heroic labour, some unheard-of ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... my dear fellow," said Roger, "on being once more a free man, with no one to suspect, except your own immediate relatives, the errant Captain Bates." ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... up in a roar fit to split the air as the hero of the day was recognized. And the Dalesmen gave a pace forward spontaneously as the gray knight-errant stole ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... the degrees of longitude of the terrestrial sphere; than to define the nature of the Indians, and their customs and vices. This is a memorandum-book in which I have employed myself for forty years, and I shall only say: Quadraginta annis proximus fui generationi huic, et dixi semper hi errant corde; [88] and I believe that Solomon himself would place this point of knowledge after the four things impossible to his understanding which he gives in chapter XXX, verse 18 of Proverbs. Only can ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... cloth of gold, and their servants in cloth of gold or of purple, followed by the mercers in silk and the butchers in scarlet, the fish sellers robed and furred and garlanded, and the master barbers, having with them two riders attired as knights-errant, and four captive damsels, strangely garbed. Then came the glass-workers in scarlet furred with vair, and gold-fringed hoods, and rich garlands of pearls, carrying flasks and goblets of the famous Venetian glass before them, and the ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... the cabinet of Louvois to receive instructions, the wise minister held language which showed how little confidence he felt in the vain and eccentric knight errant. "Do not, for God's sake, suffer yourself to be hurried away by your desire of fighting. Put all your glory in tiring the English out; and, above all ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is the young officer who, the other day, declared that he wished for no adventures save those that came in the course of a campaign, and now he is declaring that he would like to become a very knight errant, and go ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... the last stages of it. Here, on this fair oasis, you will find painting, poetry, dancing, theatres, and music, fetes and fireworks, with all the little amorous arts that characterise a nation's decline. You will meet with numerous Don Quixotes, soi-disant knights-errant, Romeos without the heart, and ruffians without the courage. You will meet with many things before you encounter either virtue or ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... world was then ignorant and credulous and passionately fond of wonderful adventures and deeds of valor. They believed in giants, dwarfs, dragons, enchanted castles, and every imaginable species of necromancy. These form the materials of the old romance. The knight-errant was described as courteous, religious, valiant, adventurous, and temperate. Some enchanters befriended and others opposed him. To do his mistress honor, and to prove himself worthy of her, he was made to encounter the warrior, hew down the giant, cut the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... conceiving. At any rate, he was free to bring her his daily tale of worship, to glean a look of kindness from her clear eyes. This was his happiness. For her sake he would sacrifice it. For Zora's sake he would marry Emmy. The heart of Septimus was that of a Knight-Errant confident in the righteousness of his quest. The certainty had come all at once in the flash of inspiration. Besides, was he not carrying out Zora's wish? He remembered her words. It would be the greatest pleasure ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... not by any exertion of strength remove the tree; and if we sent back for assistance, it would have been a work of time. SO we dismounted, got the ladies to alight, and Aaron Bang, Transom, and myself, like true knights—errant, undertook to ride the mulos ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... though part of the insuperable load of trouble and anxiety had been lifted from his shoulders. His duty was now quite simple and straightforward. When he reached down he had only to seek out Peter, lay the whole matter before him, and then in some way or other he believed that Nan's errant feet would be turned from the dangerous path on ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... took in the disreputable younger, his once handsome face marred—one doesn't foregather with swine in the sty without acquiring marks of the association—his clothing in rags. Thus errant youth, that was youth no longer, came back from that far country. Under such circumstances one generally has to walk most of the way. He had often heard the chimes at midnight, sleeping coldly in the straw stack of the fields, and the dust of the road clung to his person. ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... burning zeal of the founders of the Franciscans and of the Jesuits? Of the first he had nothing more to say than that he was 'at first only a well-minded but weak enthusiast, afterwards a mere hypocrite and impostor;' of the other he spoke with a certain compassion as 'that errant, shatter-brained, visionary fanatic.'[609] And the Methodist, he thought, had a somewhat 'similar ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... vice. It was not the doctrine, but the practice which they condemned. With the accession of the house of Plantagenet, the people were made to feel that the Norman monarchy was a curse, without alloy. Richard I. was a knight-errant and a crusader, who cared little for the realm; John was an adulterer, traitor, and coward, who roused the people's anger by first quarrelling with the Pope, and then basely giving him the kingdom to receive it ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... shed blood to regain his own lost kingdom; but he was a true knight-errant and redresser of wrongs. He asked leave from William to raise a Saxon army to restore his nephew to the Scottish throne; and such was the reliance that even the scoffer William had learnt to place on his word, that ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... dried leaves, laid his cloak upon them, and picked up Isoult to lay her upon the cloak. His arms about her woke her up. Scarce knowing what she did, dreaming possibly of her mother, she put up her face towards his; but if Prosper noticed it, no errant mercy from him sent her to bed comforted. He put her down, covered her about with the cloak, and patted her shoulder with an easy—"Good-night, my lass." This was cold cheer to the poor girl, who had to be content with his ministry of the cloak. It was too dark to tell if he was looking at her ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... not yet learned to regard the term "delightful" as an active participle, it is evident that, however "cool" I may consider the correction, I have not called it an "impertinence." But he has no mind that I should escape so easily; and therefore, like a true knight-errant, he adopts the cause without hesitation, as though to be first satisfied of its goodness would be quite ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... the honour of the social organism man builds for his own habitation? The idea of knighthood still stirs us and the deeds of chivalry and the courtesy and the honour of the social Knights of the Round Table, Crusaders and knights errant, the quest of the Holy Grail, rescue and adventure, the fighting with paynims and powers of evil, still stir our blood and arouse in our minds strange contrasts and antinomies. Princes and fair chatelaines in their wide domains with castle and chase and delicate pleasaunce, liege-men ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... with sawing and hammering during the whole of the next two days, for the Andromeda revealed many gaps in her woodwork, but the escapade of an errant ham-bone was utterly eclipsed by a new sensation. At daybreak one morning every drop of water in the vessel's tanks suddenly assumed a rich, blood-red tint. This unnerving discovery was made by the cook, who was horrified to see a ruby stream ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... proper uses in a time of peace. Relying as we had and must hereafter upon the merchant marine to man whatever additional vessels we should require, and upon the bold and hardy Yankee sailor, when he could no longer get freight for his craft, to receive a proper armament, and go forth like a knight errant of the sea in quest of adventure against the enemies of ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... sympathy, to purify morals, to make men truly brave and loyal. Of course this ideal of character was not in the days of chivalry—ideals are not often now—very fully realised. The Mediaeval, like the Modern, abused his power of muscle, of sword, of rank. His liberty as a knight-errant sometimes descended into the licence of a highwayman; his pride in the opportunity for helpfulness grew to be the braggadocio of a bully; his freedom of personal choice became the insolence of lawlessness; his pretended purity ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... do not wish to represent Frank as a sort of knight-errant, but the fact is that if anyone with respectable and humane ideas goes on the tramp (I have this from the mouth of experienced persons) he has to make up his mind fairly soon either to be a redresser of wrongs or to be ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... any other Writer of Romance, had introduced a Necromancer, who is generally in the Train of a Knight-Errant, making a Present to two Lovers of a Couple of those above-mentioned Needles, the Reader would not have been a little pleased to have seen them corresponding with one another when they were guarded by Spies and Watches, or ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... lodging in the same house as Kule, was maddened by it. Being a doctor, he foresaw clearly the fate of the pure, lovely, girlish victim of Kule's brutal passion, and in rescuing her from it he had displayed, in the opinion of his friends, the chivalry of soul of a modern knight-errant. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... the least the fair damsel could do for her knight-errant was to bind up his wounds, but Cis was too shy to show any disposition so to do, and it was Mrs. Talbot who salved the scratch for him. She had a feeling for the motherless youth, upon whom she foreboded that a fatal ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... o' roominates on the play, up an' down, for a day or so, makin' out a plan. He don't want to go back himse'f; the agent knows him, an' them Injuns knows him, an' it's even money, if he comes pokin' into their bailiwick, they'll tumble to his errant. In sech events, they're shore doo to corral him an' give them ants another holiday. It's the ant part that gives pore Captain ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... half-opened leaves, dainty and frail, reminded him of clouds of butterflies. He could think of nothing else. White, cotton-like clouds unfolded above the blossoming trees; patches of blue appeared and disappeared; and he wandered on again, beguiled this time by many errant scents and ...
— The Lake • George Moore |
