"Quixotism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is briefly this: Society demands of women an absolute chastity, and refuses to condone the least lapse, either before or after marriage. But toward men it is indulgent. It readily overlooks a plenteous seed of wild oats, and would regard it as the sheerest Quixotism to judge the bridegroom by the same standard of purity as it does the bride. It is easy enough, and perhaps also legitimate, to exclaim with Bjoernson that this is all wrong, and that a man has no right to ask any more than he gives. As a mere matter of equity a wife owes her husband ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... country are developed not as a matter of taste, but as a matter of profit. The crops which can be raised to best advantage in this region are the crops which without a railroad must rot on the ground. No man can be expected to settle in a new country from pure Quixotism,—and nothing but the railroad would make anything else of his expenditure of energies beyond the needs of self-support. The Plains are the natural pasture of the continent; but they have no natural fascination for the white man which can induce him to take up ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... exploding the old-fashioned system or the dignity of human nature than the dry maxims of Rochefaucault, the sophisms of Mandeville, or even the malicious wit of Swift. This is also another effect of the progress of philosophy; and this sort of moral Quixotism, continually in search of evil, and more gratified in discovering it than pained by its existence, may be very philosophical; but it is at least gloomy and discouraging; and we may be permitted to doubt whether mankind become ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... her pretty legend has quite disappeared in the light of these recent memoirs, and the historians and commentators no longer attempt to defend her against even the abominable stories which Barras tells of her. "It would be Don-quixotism to deny them," says M. Gustave Larroumet, among others; "the Josephines prefer the ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... 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 get a conquest, or a court-martial. A very unpleasant ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
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