"Errant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... owner of the name, turning his rather errant steps in the direction of the summons; "are you people still there? Must have heard everything cows got to say by this time. If you haven't, no use waiting. After all, it's a Russian legend, and Russian Chrismush ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... occasion the saint was more successful. Laurentia, a maiden of youthful years, placed by her father within the sheltering walls of a cloister, to assume ultimately monastic vows, was quickly captured by an errant demon. As an irrefutable demonstration of the impure origin of her infirmity, an annalist asserts, this spirit promptly answered in elegant Latinity all questions propounded; but the strongest confirmation of this belief was the miraculous ability which enabled her to disclose the most ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... and accepted members of this order of modern knights-errant, from hot-headed, ill-fated Pilatre de Rozier down to Gaston Tissandier, the man who still edits La Nature in the lower strata of an ocean into the treacherous upper depths of which he has risen seven miles. Your true aeronaut is not an inventor of flying-machines, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... clinging thin passionate purity of her mouth. "No, certainly not, never," he muttered, extraordinarily stirred. He asserted to himself that he would make no such fatal mistake. The other, the errant fancy, was no more than a vagrant unimportant impulse. "Don't let these women, who cat around, upset you; probably they are thinking not so much about their husbands as they are of themselves. I've seen that Alice Lucian parked out ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... a melancholy old barrel-organ in the courtyard, go to the window and give a penny to the poor errant [Footnote: Errant: wandering.] musician—perhaps it is Don Gaetano! If you find that his organ disturbs you, try if you like it, better by making him stand a little farther off, but don't send him away with harshness! He has to bear so many hard ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... In the former no change. He had merely kicked over traces and was now come back to run in them. Thought of this with some bitterness. But reception well meant. There was the Aged P. violently beckoning with venerable forefinger, and the errant son made his way up to him, fell on his neck and kissed him——this of course ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... one who seems to regard the good of others. He, in civil life, whose thoughts turn upon schemes which may be of general benefit, without further reflection, is called a projector; and the man whose mind seems intent upon glorious achievements, a knight-errant. The ridicule among us runs strong against laudable actions; nay, in the ordinary course of things, and the common regards of life, negligence of the public is an epidemic vice. The brewer in his excise, the merchant in his customs, and, for aught we know, the soldier in his muster-rolls, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... you see me without bruise or scratch. Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, 'spoiling a patch ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... service which is capricious and voluntary (the administration of justice by knights-errant, for instance), precisely because it is capricious and voluntary. Such service presupposes acting according to subjective opinion, and also the possibility of neglect and of the realization of private ends. The opposite extreme to the knight-errant in reference ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... common road. Do but survey this crowded house to-night:— Here's still encouragement for those that write. 30 Our author, to divert his friends to-day, Stocks with variety of fools his play; And that there may be something gay and new, Two ladies-errant has exposed to view: The first a damsel, travelled in romance; The t'other more refined; she comes from France: Rescue, like courteous knights, the nymph from danger; And kindly treat, like well-bred ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... evident disguise in liquor I knew the voice of my errant Pat. Would it be wise to accost him at such a moment, in such company? The streets of the Lower Town were none too peaceful after dark. And yet, if he were not altogether out of his head, it would be a good thing to stop him from going further and getting ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... River. This partisan appeared at the rendezvous without his party, and a sorrowful tale of disasters had he to relate. In hunting the Crow country, he fell in with a village of that tribe; notorious rogues, jockeys, and horse stealers, and errant scamperers of the mountains. These decoyed most of his men to desert, and carry off horses, traps, and accoutrements. When he attempted to retake the deserters, the Crow warriors ruffled up to him and declared the deserters were their good friends, had determined to remain ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... manifesto." He strongly condemned the agreement made in 1859 between Napoleon III and Piedmont, because he foresaw its inevitable consequences. Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Cavour were a trio who largely influenced their country's destiny. Garibaldi has been called the knight-errant; Mazzini, the prophet of Italian unity; and Cavour was the hub which formed the centre of the ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... itself—nothing less than the reinstatement before the world of the family her mother had disgraced, the once-proud Kildares of Storm. She was going forth to do battle alone for the tarnished honor of her name, a gallant little knight-errant, tight-lipped and heavy-hearted, and far more afraid than she ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... had darkened into black wings, through the twilight Sweeping away into night—past the broken tombs of the Hebrews Homeward we sauntered slowly, through dew-sweet, blossomy alleys; So drew near the boat by errant and careless approaches, Entered, and left with indolent ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... and the other only Plump Jack. Deeply corporealised, and enchained hopelessly in the grovelling fetters of externality, must be the mind, to which, in its better moments, the image of the high-souled, high-intelligenced Quixote—the errant Star of Knighthood, made more tender by eclipse—has never presented itself, divested from the unhallowed accompaniment of a Sancho, or a rabblement at the heels of Rosinante. That man has read his book by halves; he has laughed, mistaking ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... dedication to martial glory. Very good indeed! And then his manner under the eyes of the girlish Princess—how quickly her high-born grace had captivated him! Something impossible were he not of a romantic turn, a poet, sentimentalist, knight errant. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Happily, the musicians errant still strum their mandoline as you dine. The old trattoria in the Toledo is as good as ever, as bright, as comfortable. I have found my old corner in one of the little rooms, and something of the old gusto for zuppa di vongole. The homely wine of Posillipo smacks as in days ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... "Or knight-errant," he continued, "whichever you choose. You want to get out of Quicksands—I'm trying to make it easy for you. Before you leave you have to arrange some place to go. Before we are off with the old we'd better ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Duckett presided, strumming a guitar, while his black face had a portentous gravity as he assigned the desserts for each table. What an ordeal it was for shy freshmen to rise and walk the length of the dining-room! How many tables were kept waiting for the next course while errant students surveyed the sunset through the kitchen windows! Some of us remember the tragic moments when, coming in hot and tired from crew practice, we found on the bulletin-board by the dining-room the fateful words, 'strawberries for dinner', and we knew it was our lot to prepare ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... would not have, prevailed. But Lincoln's personal reluctance to resist all entreaties on behalf of his own forerunner and his own rival was great; and then Fremont came to Lincoln and proposed to him a knight-errant's adventure to succour the oppressed Unionists of Tennessee by an expedition through West Virginia. So he was now to proceed there, but was kept for the present in the mountains near the Shenandoah valley. The way in which the forces under McDowell, Banks and Fremont ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... 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
... here; I come to tell you where to find A treasure, which I left behind: I had not time to let you know it, But follow me, and now I'll shew it." John trembled at the awful sight, But hopes of gain suppress'd his fright; Oft will the parching thirst of gold, Make even errant ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... other Gothic tribes, brought their ardent courage to ferment yet more highly in the genial climes of the south, and under the blaze of romantic chivalry. Hence, during the dark ages, the invisible world was modelled after the material; and the saints, to the protection of whom the knights-errant were accustomed to recommend themselves, were accoutered like preux chevaliers, by the ardent imaginations of their votaries. With such ideas concerning the inhabitants of the celestial regions, we ought not ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... tension endures. The main point of difference is that the gentleman 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 ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... tear-dimmed eyes New lights arise. He drops his treasured pennies on the ground, They roll and bound And scattered, rest. Now with what zest He runs to find his errant ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... winds and rough seas, that is, amid obstacles and drawbacks, and even ill-health, where passive and active may balance and give effect to each other. Stevenson was by native instinct and temperament a rover—a lover of adventure, of strange by-ways, errant tracts (as seen in his Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey through the Cevennes—seen yet more, perhaps, in a certain account of a voyage to America as a steerage passenger), lofty mountain- tops, with stronger air, and strange and novel surroundings. He would fain, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... had never been down before. Halfway along it was an open-air eating place of some kind, with tables placed about under the trees. There seemed to be no customers at the moment but he stopped, anyway, to take a closer look for errant guards. ...
— The Helpful Hand of God • Tom Godwin
... serene confidence in himself returned in these emergencies, and he was doing invaluable work. People were grateful, but the man's ways and looks were so strange, his restlessness so tragic, that they dubbed him "le Juif Errant." ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a word of him, and Warkworth's jealousy had died for lack of fuel. In relation to Julie, Delafield had been surely the mere shadow and agent of his little cousin the Duchess—a friendly, knight-errant sort of person, with a liking for the distressed. What! the heir-presumptive of Chudleigh Abbey, and one of the most famous of English dukedoms, when even he, the struggling, penurious officer, would never have ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... well of myself, as any knight errant that ever handled a sword and spear. I took my perspective glass and went up to the side of the hill, to see what I could discover; and I perceived very soon, by my glass, that there were one and twenty savages, three prisoners, and three canoes, and that their chief concern seemed to be the triumphant ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... days ago, we almost held it, The love we so desired; But our shut eyes saw not, and fate dispelled it Before our pulses fired To flame, and errant fortune bade us stand ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... to venture on an attempt at choosing the quietest streets; and besides, it occurred to him that where the passengers were most numerous there was, perhaps, the most chance of meeting with Monna Ghita and finding an end to his knight-errant-ship. So he made straight for Porta Rossa, and on to Ognissanti, showing his usual bright propitiatory face to the mixed observers who threw their jests at him and his little heavy-shod maiden with much liberality. Mingled with the more ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... hunted on certain days. In the Isle of Man the wren-hunt took place on Christmas Eve and St Stephen's Day, and is accounted for by a legend concerning an evil fairy who lured many men to destruction, but had to assume the form of a wren to escape punishment at the hands of an ingenious knight-errant. ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... The diagnosis of Yabolo, the wizard, was that her soul had wandered in sleep down to the river and had been swallowed by a fish. Yabolo had caught the fish and lured the soul into a tree, but now he demanded such a big price to restore the errant soul to the girl that her father, Bakuma's uncle, would not pay it, so she would surely die; then they would all have to be exorcised, which inferred a further loss of relative freedom for another four days. Indeed with all these actual and possible delays it seemed to ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... the temples, with one lock straggling Napoleonically down toward the eyes; cheeks that had almost a babyish tint to them; lips much too rich, red, and sensuous; a nose that was fine and large and full, but only faintly aquiline; and eyebrows and mustache that somehow seemed to flare quite like his errant and foolish soul. He had been sent away from Denmark (Copenhagen) because he had been a never-do-well up to twenty-five and because he was constantly falling in love with women who would not have anything to do with him. Here in Chicago as a teacher, with his small pension of forty dollars a ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... consider, while Molly suddenly whirled down the street and pounced on the errant collie. Seeing this, Constable McSherry turned to continue ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... England had the most prudent aristocracy, but the most reckless democracy in the world. It was, and is, the English contradiction, which has so much misrepresented us, especially to the Irish. Our national captains were carpet knights; our knights errant were among the dismounted rabble. When an Austrian general who had flogged women in the conquered provinces appeared in the London streets, some common draymen off a cart behaved with the direct quixotry of Sir Lancelot or Sir ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... western Saracens at Granada and the rise of the Turks in the East, the rise of Russia, the downfall of the last vestige of the ancient empire of Rome, the last expiring effort of feudalism in Charles the Bold, and of errant knighthood in Maximilian; the beginning of modern statecraft in Louis XI of France, Henry VII of England, and Ferdinand the Wise of Spain; the spread of printing and with it the spread of thought and knowledge among the masses; and, sometimes accounted greatest of all, came the wonderful awakening ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... about, face about; turn to the right about, face to the right about; waddle &c. (oscillate) 314; go out of one's way &c. (perform a circuit) 629; lose one's way. Adj. deviating &c. v.; aberrant, errant; excursive, discursive; devious, desultory, loose; rambling; stray, erratic, vagrant, undirected, circuitous, indirect, zigzag; crab-like. Adv. astray from, round about, wide of the mark; to the right about; all manner of ways; circuitously &c. 629. obliquely, sideling, like the move of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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 ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... sons as well as daughters, without special permission from the lord of the castle; he authorised the visits of Mr Browning, the poet, being fondly assured that Mr Browning's intentions were not those of a burglar, or—worse—an amorous knight-errant. If any daughter of his conceived the possibility of transferring her prime love and loyalty from himself to another, she was even as Aholah and Aholibah who doted upon the Assyrians, captains, and rulers clothed most gorgeously, all of them desirable young men. "If a prince ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... lives of the Saints. Consciousness of guilt, a fiery temper, and a wild imagination, the common ingredients of enthusiasm, made this madman devote himself to the particular service of the Virgin Mary; whose knight-errant he declared himself, in the very same form in which the old knight-errants in romances used to declare themselves the knights and champions of certain beautiful and incomparable princesses, whom sometimes they had, but oftener had ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... is not without its bearing on "Don Quixote." A man who could look back upon an ancestry of genuine knights-errant extending from well-nigh the time of Pelayo to the siege of Granada was likely to have a strong feeling on the subject of the sham chivalry of the romances. It gives a point, too, to what he says in more than one ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... 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
... manner he proceeded, a literary knight errant, filled with a chivalrous love of letters, which would have done honor to the most learned peripatetic of them all; enlarging his own powers, and making fresh acquisitions of knowledge as he went ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... winter evenings the country folk amused themselves around their winter's fireside by telling old romantic stories of errant knights and fairies, goblins, witches, and the rest; or ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... 261.).—Your correspondent will find an account of the Wandering Jew prefixed to "Le Juif errant," the 3ieme livraison of Chants et Chansons Populaires de ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... and sundry with the unfailing remark, "It's my own 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 ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... horses during the journey, after having perhaps knocked me on the head in some lone posada. He is moreover acquainted with every road, cross-road, river, and mountain in Spain, and is therefore a very suitable squire for an errant knight, like myself. On my arrival in Biscay I shall perhaps engage one of the uncorrupted Basque peasants, who has never left his native mountains and is utterly ignorant of the Spanish language, for I am told that they are exceedingly ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... living in retirement with his mother in the country, becomes an evangelist, very mainly from want of some more interesting occupation, is altogether good-humoured. Wildgoose promptly falls in love with a fascinating damsel-errant, Julia Townsend; and the various adventures, religious, picaresque, and amatory, are embroiled and disembroiled with very fair skill in character and fairer still in narrative. Nor is the Sancho-Partridge of the piece, Jerry Tugwell, a cobbler (who thinks, though he is very ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... a wicked being, we may give the matured and recent judgment of Ralph Flare himself. Put to the test of religion, or even of respectability, this intimacy was baneful. A wild young man had broken his honor for the companionship of a poor, errant girl. She was poor, but she hated to work; she had no regard for his money; she did not share his ambition. Making against her a case thus clear and certain, Ralph Flare entered for Suzette the plea of not wicked, and ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... 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 love that waits ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... deposed from their old-time place of honour. These stories, however, were as yet so imperfectly known—and only to a few—that the most to be said is that some connection between their reviving popularity and the name of Smollett's knight-errant hero is not impossible. ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... had not resolved. I gave her three plans, and think it likely she will adopt none of them: moreover, when the executive government of postilions, landlords, and Highland boatmen devolves upon her English servant instead of me, I am afraid the distresses of the errant damsels will fall a little beneath the dignity of romances. All this nonsense is entre nous, for Miss White has been actively zealous in getting me some Irish correspondence about Swift, and ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... a moment. Only his father made much of him. For all his great wealth, he was very stingy and greedy; he even lent money at usury to his best friends. Our amusing little friend Maksi was this man's son. The slender, fanciful damsel, Henrietta, who appeared in that family like an errant angel specially sent there to be tormented for the sins of her whole race, was the orphan daughter of another son of old Lapussa, who had lost father and mother at the same time in the most tragical manner; ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... 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 ape.' A most unjust description of the ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... looks like a knight-errant. So did his father, poor Harwich. I used to act with Harwich in the early never-mind-whats at Burnham House. One scarcely ever sees Nigel now. I don't think he was ever at all really fond of London and gaieties. Harwich ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... qualis 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
... Dickens The Angel's Story Echoes A False Genius My Picture Judge Not Friend Sorrow One by One True Honours A Woman's Question The Three Rulers A Dead Past A Doubting Heart A Student A Knight Errant Linger, oh, gentle Time Homeward Bound Life and Death Now Cleansing Fires The Voice of the Wind Treasures Shining Stars Waiting The Cradle Song of the Poor Be strong God's Gifts A Tomb in Ghent The Angel of Death A Dream The Present Changes ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... of his dumb visitor, and leaning on his axe he said, "Look here, Sis, what have you come for? What's your errant? Do you want apples? Or cider? Or what? Speak out, or ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... pause for a moment on this matter. I do not believe that Raymond had ever thought, in seriousness, of any such gift. It must have been at best an errant fancy, and if concerned with commemorating anybody concerned with commemorating himself. But I will say this for him: he never was disposed to try getting things out of people, for he hated attempts at trickery almost as much as he detested the exercise of the shrewdness involved in bargaining ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... 'neath her frown the errant earth in winter seems Prostrate to lie, and petulant of mood; Restrained in icy fetters all the babbling streams, Like naughty babes who're learning to ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... done. Thence to the coverts and the conscious groves, The scenes of his past triumphs and his loves; Sadly surveying where he ranged alone Prince of the soil, and all the herd his own, 280 And like a bold knight-errant did proclaim. Combat to all, and bore away the dame, And taught the woods to echo to the stream His dreadful challenge, and his clashing beam; Yet faintly now declines the fatal strife; So much his love was dearer than his life. Now every leaf, and every moving breath Presents a foe, and ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... Mr Tapley; a hasty interchange of farewells, and of something else which the proverb says must not be told of afterwards; a white hand held out to Mr Tapley himself, which he kissed with the devotion of a knight-errant; more farewells, more something else's; a parting word from Martin that he would write from London and would do great things there yet (Heaven knows what, but he quite believed it); and Mark and he stood on the outside of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... West has met the East. Such a momentous meeting of humanity, in order to be fruitful, must have in its heart some great emotional idea, generous and creative. There can be no doubt that God's choice has fallen upon the knights-errant of the West for the service of the present age; arms and armour have been given to them; but have they yet realised in their hearts the single-minded loyalty to their cause which can resist all temptations of bribery from the ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... the jagged summit of the cliff that sharply serrated the zenith, he saw the earliest star, glorious in the crimson and amber sky. Below, a point of silver light quivered, reflected in the crimson and amber waters of the "lick." The fire-flies were flickering among the ferns; he saw about him their errant gleam. The shadowy herds trooped down the ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... other adventures, my dear child," wrote her mother, with gentle raillery. "What with your announcement of the presentation of the medal, and Mrs. Mason's enthusiastic letter, your father and I begin to believe that we have a kind of female knight errant for a daughter. I am afraid we never shall get our ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... unwilling to pay hard-earned wages to support them in idleness and 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 ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... glance To recall What bond-servants of Chance We are all. I but found her in that, going On my errant path unknowing, I did not out-skirt the spot That no spot on earth ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... what makes a man manliest;—not puny resolve, not crude determination, not errant purpose, but that strong and indefatigable will which treads down difficulties and danger as a boy treads down the heaving frost-lands of winter,—which kindles his eye and brain with a proud pulse-beat toward the unattainable. Will makes ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... masterful-looking resultants, 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 of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Delcasars. Dona Ameliana, a beautiful but somewhat unruly girl, went into a convent in Durango, Mexico, at the age of fifteen. At the age of eighteen she eloped with a French priest named Raubien, who was a man of unusual intellect and a poet. The errant couple came to New Mexico and took up lands. They were excommunicated, of course, and both of them were buried in unconsecrated ground; but despite their spiritual handicaps they raised a family of eleven comely daughters, all of whom married well, several ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... little of the urgency of the case, when I requested his leave to take my lessons each morning at six o'clock, for I dared not absent myself during the day without exciting suspicion; and never, I will venture to assert, did knight-errant of old strive harder for the hand of his lady-love than did I during that weary fortnight, if a hippogriff had been the animal I bestrode, instead of being, as it was, an old wall-eyed grey, I could not have felt more misgivings at my temerity, or more proud of my achievement. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... very errant rogue, sir, and a cheater, Employ'd here by another conjurer That does not love the doctor, and would cross ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... adopted the practice which seemed to us rather foolish, of vigorously sounding his gong time after time, at the same time shouting "Alphonse, Alphonse," with the result that all our men vanished "tout-de-suite," leaving him and the errant Alphonse to face any whizz-bangs which might result. Truly, the French are ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... pis, mon cher. I wish to Heaven mine did; and, by Saint Patrick, if I only played the knight-errant half as gallantly as yourself, I would not relinquish my claims to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Walkers, a still more ancient and honourable class, I trust. The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker,—not the Knight, but Walker, Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... forget the impression made upon my fancy by some of the ladies' maids tripping about in neat morning dresses. After seeing for a long time little but rusticity, their lively manner, and gay inviting appearance, pleased me so much, that I thought, for the moment, I could have been a knight-errant ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... sharp angle over the water, and the branches were so far up that it was necessary to climb out a short distance in order to reach them. Mr. Opp's soul was undoubtedly that of a knight-errant, but his body, alas! was not. When he found himself astride the slender, swaying trunk, with the bank dropping sharply to the river flowing dizzily beneath him, he went suddenly and unexpectedly blind. Between admiration for himself for ever having gotten there, ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... to those who have read with unwavering credulity the olden tales of the prowess and achievements of knights errant in the days of chivalry, that one should stop to relate such a commonplace incident as the shooting of a wolf, and above all, that the hero of this narrative, should betray, even to his horse, such a decided emotion of self admiration for having performed the feat. ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... of that river and south of the lakes, intact, which shows how the common consent of nations accorded to French valor in exploration the bulk of the North American continent. Essentially chivalrous, the French explorer proved the knight-errant among American discoverers. By the treaty of 1803, Napoleon ceded 1,171,931 square miles to the United States, a tract eight times as large as France itself. France, by rights acquired by discoveries, owned about two-thirds of the continent of North America, and to-day owns not so much ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... often see in a mill, showing both the wealth of the owner and the flourishing condition of his trade. The asses of Africa are finer than those in the north; but this is fine for an African. One fellow mounts upon it, and sets off with the world before him, like a knight-errant, seeking an adventure, the rabble at his tail acting as squire. He begins the circuit of the Forum, and picks up its riff-raff as he goes along—here some rascal boys, there some drunken women, here again a number ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... found me in sore need of this teaching. It was then that errant impulse counselled rebellion against the decrees of calendar and looking-glass. If vatted wine in dark cellars turns in its bed and mutters seethingly at this time, in a mysterious, intuitive sympathy with the blossoming grape, a man free and above ground, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... mistake the clustered curls Upon his hated hyacinthine head? Have they not wiled from me the fickle heart Of perjured BANDOLINA! There, he stands Before my window, where a winsome form, Rotating slow with measured self-display, Has caught his errant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... only corrected his nonsense by saying, "I think we mustn't be too romantic. You will become a knight-errant, I suppose. You have the characteristics ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... expression; and yet withal they endear themselves in a way wholly their own. It is strange that a period which has bestowed so much appreciation on the work of the artists of "the sixties" has seen no knight-errant with "Arthur Hughes" inscribed on his banner—no exhibition of his black-and-white work, no craze in auction-rooms for first editions of books he illustrated. He has, however, a steady if limited band of very faithful devotees, and ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... the destruction of the "sinners,"—mingle with the beautiful and soothing promises of the prophets. There are indeed occasionally to be found among the believers men of refined and exalted spiritualism, who in their lives and conversation remind one of Tennyson's Christian knight-errant in his yearning towards ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... later he was wandering through the house searching in the darkened rooms for his brother. It was characteristic of him that he did not confine his search to the house, but sought the missing man in every unlikely spot his vigorous and errant imagination could suggest. He visited the corrals, he visited the barn, he visited the hog pens and the chicken roosts. Then he brought up to a final halt upon the veranda and sought to solve ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... a few hundred men you have won battles and taken towns. Your name recalls the name of William Tell. Wherever there were chains to rend and yokes to break, you were seen to hasten. Like the warriors Hugo exalts in his Legende des Siecles, you have been the champion of justice, the knight-errant of liberty. You appear to us victorious in a distant vision, as in the realm of legend. For the glory of our age in which heroes are wanting, it befits you to remain that which you are. Continue ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... our hatred of war and oppression. His great genius seemed to me to be always held firmly in hand by a sense of duty, and by the practical common sense of a shrewd man of business. He fought through life like an old knight-errant, but without enthusiasm. He had no personal ideals. I remember once how he remonstrated with me for my admiration for General Gordon. He looked upon that wonderful personality as a wild fighter, a rash adventurer, doing evil that good might ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... hundred yards distant in any direction. Fortunately I had walked little more than a mile when shouts in Piet's high-pitched voice reached my ears, and presently, guided by my shouts in reply, the Hottentot hove in sight, mounted upon Tempest and leading the errant Jack by the bridle— the latter having galloped straight to the wagon, as I had fully expected he would; and half an hour later we rode into camp ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... figure outlined darkly against the clear blue background of sky and distance. He gazed unseeingly into space; thought and movement alike were suspended. He was only conscious of pain. He knew all was ended. Thus his errant forbear from the north may have stood five hundred years ago, leaning upon his lance, a sword in his ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... 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
... smith's wife say 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 ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... walked beside her, cared for her, tended her, guarded her, served her as if he had been a knight-errant out of a romance, and she a distressed princess. And she rewarded him with a delicate kindliness, and a perfectly trustful, childlike dependence upon his strength, wisdom, and resource. All her bearing towards him was marked by an inexpressible charm, half-playful, wholly ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... opposition of those who placed him in power and protect him in the possession of it—may well be doubted." Brandeis had come to Apia in the firm's livery. Even while he promised neutrality in commerce, the clerks were prating a different story in the bar-rooms; and the late high feat of the knight-errant, Becker, had killed all confidence in Germans at the root. By these three impolicies, the German adventure in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... names after her lovers, in connection with which there are many old rhymes. Beans have not lost their popularity; and the leaves of the laurel still reveal the hidden fortune, having been also burnt in olden times by girls to win back their errant lovers. ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... into a darkness past your thought— Into an emptiness you know not of— A night profounder that it late has held Marsh-lights of promise. My last altar lies Smoking in ruins; and I stand alone Of all the universe. But my Will be done! My errant tortured Will, my bitter Will, My ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... followed by the rustling thrill of the bell-wire, and then by a tinkling far below, too gentle to waken the house that continued to enjoy the undisturbed dream of its repose. At first we supposed it might be but some late-home-going knight-errant from a feast of shells, in a mood, 'between malice and true-love,' seeking to disquiet the slumbers of Old Christopher, in expectation of seeing his night-cap (which he never wears) popped out of the window, and of hearing his voice (of which he is charry in the open air) simulating ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... nerves all shaken, By this fearful storm o'ertaken, As it swept on toward the sunrise; Yet, I chanced to lift my dim eyes Upward, when, O sight entrancing, I beheld, to west advancing, Other clouds, in higher current, Unlike earth's, so wild and errant. ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... abode, exercising themselves in all feats of arms. So when spring returned they set forth, as knights errant, to ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... unknown friend?" "Daughter of mortality," returned the dying voice of the phantom, "I cannot tell. That night my mission upon earth was ended. But some of my sister-flowers, which bloom about the graves of the dead, have sent me messages from time to time by the breath of God's messenger, the errant breeze of heaven. And they tell me that a certain rich chemist of a large town in Piedmont, a handsome prosperous young man, named Battista Delcor, has caused a great white cross to be set above the resting-place of Herr Ritter. And upon the base of the cross these ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... qui in ejusmodi Fraternitatem sive participationem orationum aliorumque bonorum spiritualium sive monachorum sive aliarum Ecclesiarum et jam Cathedralium admissi errant, sive ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... West. The East. An American Literature. Newspaper Enterprise, Mails, Eleemosynary Institutions. American Character. Temperance Reform. The Land of the Free. Religion. Anti-masonic Movement. Banking Craze. Moon Hoax. Party Spirit. Jackson as a Knight Errant. His Self-will. Enmity between Adams ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... of all classes of readers. Every school-boy thumbs to pieces the most wretched translations of his romance, and knows the lantern jaws of the Knight Errant, and the broad cheeks of the Squire, as well as the faces of his own playfellows. The most experienced and fastidious judges are amazed at the perfection of that art which extracts inextinguishable ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... astonished! You seem to wonder and ask yourselves who is this modern Quixote. What mean this costume of by-gone centuries—this golden chariot—these richly caparisoned steeds? What is the name and purpose of this curious knight-errant? Gentlemen, I will condescend to answer your queries. I am Monsieur Mangin, the great charlatan of France! Yes, gentlemen, I am a charlatan—a mountebank; it is my profession, not from choice, but from necessity. You, gentlemen, created that necessity! You would not patronize ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... fifteenth century the more purely intellectual side of mysticism comes out more strongly than the exstatic—so dominant in these societies of the fourteenth—and we have Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa, with Giordano Bruno, the martyred knight-errant of philosophy, and Paracelsus, the much slandered scientist, who drew his knowledge directly from the original eastern fountain, instead of through ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... was called the meadow of the Thorn; there was a carrefour, where, in four roads, four knights might meet; and, above all, there was a forest called devoyable, having no path, so favourable for errant knights who might there enter for strange adventures, and, as chance directed, encounter others as bewildered as themselves. Our chivalric Sandricourt found nine young seigneurs of the court of Charles the Eighth of France, who answered all his wishes. To sanction this glorious feat it ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... uncertainty is their knack of submerging earlier and less dramatic passages in the lives of those whom Fate drags into their sweeping currents. Lest, therefore, the strangely contrived meeting between Sylvia and her knight errant should be neglected by the chronicler, it is well to return to those two young people at the moment when Sylvia was declaring her unimpaired ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... 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 |
