"Quixotism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... middle age here well remember the hostility and ridicule the project occasioned when it was first broached. Some said no railroad ever could be built on the river's edge; and, if you should build one, the enormous expense incurred would make it forever unprofitable. It seemed then the height of Quixotism to lay an expensive track where the river offered a free way to all. Property holders, whose property was to be greatly benefited, fought the railroad company with unusual spirit and persistence. But the railroad came, nevertheless, and needs no advocate or apologist to-day. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... say seems impertinent; but surely it is you that should be prudent on her behalf. She is young, and does not know the meaning of living on an income of a hundred and sixty pounds a year. On her account give up this idea. Believe me, it is sheer Quixotism." ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... upon his son on account of his early propensity to fight moral windmills, and the Quixotic zeal with which he espoused the cause of the weak and the fair. This knight-errant proclivity ripened from the Quixotism of boyhood into the chivalrous devotion which had manifested itself in his somewhat romantic friendship for Maurice,—a friendship productive of such happy results to ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... to command the new Quixotism on foot, and has been refused; I sing a very comfortable te Deum for it. Kingsley, Craufurd, and Keppel, are the generals, and Commodore Keppel the admiral. The mob are sure of being pleased; they will ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... popular sovereignty principle, Lincoln declared it "the most arrant Quixotism that was ever enacted before a community.... Does he mean to say that he has been devoting his life to securing to the people of the Territories the right to exclude slavery from the Territories? If he ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... a very brilliant circle. The whole court of Charles Dix can afford none more amusing. For the rest, what matters? One learns to take things as they seem, without peering below the surface. One wearies of impotent Quixotism against ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... in another letter of this collection—and it is among the first of the series—the following passage:—"Your Quixotism, dear Walter, was highly characteristic. From the description of the blooming fair, as she appeared when she lowered her manteau vert, I am hopeful you have not dropt the acquaintance. At least I am certain some ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various |
