"Knight-errant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that capability of reticence in Deronda that his imagination was much occupied with two women, to neither of whom would he have held it possible that he should ever make love. Hans Meyrick had laughed at him for having something of the knight-errant in his disposition; and he would have found his proof if he had known what was just now going on in Deronda's ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of the apartments. "My lady," says he, "do you remember the dwarf who yesterday angered you by wounding your damsel?" "Yes, I remember him right well. Seneschal, have you any news of him? Why have you mentioned him?" "Lady, because I have seen a knight-errant armed coming upon a grey horse, and if my eyes have not deceived me, I saw a damsel with him; and it seems to me that with him comes the dwarf, who still holds the scourge from which Erec received ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... much dignity as possible, and then recognizing me as 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
... its truth was first brought to my attention at American General Headquarters. The French attitude towards the war is utterly personal; it is bayonet to bayonet. It depends on the unflinching courage of every individual French man and woman. The English attitude is that of the knight-errant, seeking high adventures and welcoming death in a noble cause. But the German attitude disregards the individual and knows nothing of gallantry. It lacks utterly the spiritual elation which made the strength of the French ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... kingdom went the youthful scapegraces, over the hills and plains of Spain, their hearts beating with merry music,—Buckingham gay from his native spirit of adventure, Charles eager to see in knight-errant fashion the charming infanta of Spain, of whom he had seen, as yet, only the "counterfeit presentment," and a view of whom in person was the real object of his journey. So ardent were the two young men that they far outrode their companions, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... fellow-creature, and Darsie's heart had a way of making excuses for the handsome truant, who smiled with such beguiling eyes, had such a pretty knack of compliment, and was—generally!—ready to play knight-errant in her service. She felt herself lucky in possessing so charming a friend to act the part of gallant, and to be at her service when she chose to call. And then quite suddenly she drew a sharp breath and said aloud in a trembling voice, "Oh, Aunt Maria, dear Aunt Maria!" and her pillow was wet with ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... tendency to subtract from my vocation as a missionary. I was no longer a knight-errant, prepared on all occasions by dint of arms to vindicate the cause of every principle that was unjustly handled, and every character that was wrongfully assailed. Meanwhile I returned to the field, occasionally and uncertainly. It required some provocation and incitement to call me out: but ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... deep defile? What checks the fiery soul of James? Why sits that champion of the dames Inactive on his steed, And sees, between him and his land, Between him and Tweed's southern strand, His host Lord Surrey lead? What 'vails the vain knight-errant's brand? Oh, Douglas for thy leading wand! Fierce Randolph, for thy speed! Oh, for one hour of Wallace wight, Or well-skilled Bruce, to rule the fight, And cry, "Saint Andrew and our right!" Another sight had seen that morn, From Fate's dark book a leaf been torn, And Flodden had ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... his debut in the role of knight-errant. He went with many qualms and misgivings, uncertain how each new person would take it. The next evening he was promised for a theatre-party with Siegfried Harvey; and they had supper in a private room at Delmonico's, and there came Mrs. Winnie, resplendent as an apple ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... trifle of danger? Saint Anthony! How the warm blood of the Cavaliers is chilled in the young men of the present day! This young gallant, now, has a father, I warrant, who has endured as many adventures for hunting priests, as a knight-errant ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... compose the left-hand side of the canon at this point, and which have been worn by the elements into all manner of fantastic shapes, many of them calling to mind the towers and turrets of some old-world castle so vividly, that one needs but the pomp and circumstance of old knight-errant days to complete the illusion. But, as one gazes with admiration on these towering buttresses of nature, it is easy to realize that the most massive and imposing feudal castle, or ramparts built with human hands, would look like children's ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... cabaset[obs3], vizor[obs3], casquetel[obs3], siege cap, headpiece, casque, pickelhaube, vambrace[obs3], shako &c. (dress) 225. bearskin; panoply; truncheon &c. (weapon) 727. garrison, picket, piquet; defender, protector; guardian &c. (safety) 664; bodyguard, champion; knight-errant, Paladin; propugner[obs3]. bulletproof window. hardened site. V. defend, forfend, fend; shield, screen, shroud; engarrison[obs3]; fend round &c. (circumscribe) 229; fence, entrench, intrench[obs3]; guard &c. (keep safe) 664; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a day or two, when I have had time to put my thoughts on paper; but, if I mistake not, some of the most important points will be discussed before that, for Fellowes, I hear, is a very knight-errant of 'spiritualism,' and it is a thousand to one but he attempts to convert me. I intend to let him ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... made her action ridiculous, whatever his intention may have been, and the girl felt it with an access of frenzy; but at this point Tim Carrol felt himself called upon to intervene in his new character as knight-errant. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... much taken aback at so providential an interposition to contradict this highly imaginative statement. My highwayman had turned into a protecting knight-errant of injured innocence. I let the policeman go his way; then I glanced at my preserver. A very ordinary modern St. George he looked, with no lance to speak of, and no steed but a bicycle. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... of an old sealer. He had formerly been very sensitive on the point of honour; would resent an insult as promptly as any knight-errant; but by making an idol of his honour his life had been a grievous burden to him. And he was not even a gentleman, and never had been one. He was known ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... clever, a very rising young man, and so feeling, said Mrs. Ledwich to Mary while this was going on. 'In fact, he is a perfect knight-errant on this subject. He is gone to London this morning to see what can be done by means of the press. I tell Matilda it is quite a romance of modern life; and indeed, the sweet girl is very romantic still—very young, even after ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... than Calhoun, but they had been playmates from babyhood, and were great friends. Jennie called him her knight-errant. More than once he had carried a pair of black eyes in fighting her battles when some of the larger ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... season, when the Spaniards organized a cavalcade of the Quixote, he undertook to represent the knight Pentapolin—"him of the rolled-up sleeves,"—and in the Corso there were applause and cries of admiration for the huge biceps that the knight-errant, erect on his horse, revealed. When the spring nights came, the artists marched in a procession across the city to the Jewish quarter to buy the first artichokes—the popular dish in Rome, in the preparation of which an old Hebrew woman was famous. Renovales went at the head of ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... as to a friend his metaphysical speculations; he was familiar with the drama of Spain, the poems of Ronsard, the sonnets of Italy. Sidney combined the wisdom of a grave councillor with the romantic chivalry of a knight-errant. "I never heard the old story of Percy and Douglas," he says, "that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet." He flung away his life to save the English army in Flanders, and as he lay dying they brought a cup of water to his fevered lips. He bade ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... trails are becoming dust covered or grass grown or lost underneath the farmers' furrow; but in the selections of this volume, many of them poems by courtesy, men of today and those who are to follow, may sense, at least in some small measure, the service, the glamour, the romance of that knight-errant of ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... 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
... then," said Henri; "this is the last time I shall play the knight-errant for any one against his will;" and, reentering the wood as the carriage dashed off at full speed, he proceeded by narrow paths toward the castle, followed at a short distance by Grandchamp ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... unparalleled in the world, he sought, I might almost say, he advertised for enemies, and provoked means to increase taxation. Aiming at something, he knew not what, he ransacked Europe and India for adventures, and abandoning the fair pretensions he began with, he became the knight-errant of modern times. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... walls, as he wandered over space and time, an indefatigable reader of books, would be fed physically now by ear and eye, by large matter-of-fact experience, as he journeys from university to university; less as a teacher than a courtier, a citizen of the world, a knight-errant of intellectual light. The philosophic need to try all things had given reasonable justification to the stirring desire for travel common to youth, in which, if in nothing else, that whole age of the later Renaissance was invincibly young. The theoretic recognition of that mobile spirit of the ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... and 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... knight-errant or so came along, and the sight of them fired the king's martial spirit every time. He would have forgotten himself, sure, and said something to them in a style a suspicious shade or so above his ostensible degree, and so I always got him well ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of a warrior, hard to hack and hew into chips, though much marred in symmetry by battle-ax blows. Ah! but these warriors, like anvils, will stand a deal of hard hammering. Especially in the old knight-errant times. For at the battle of Brevieux in Flanders, my glorious old gossiping ancestor, Froissart, informs me, that ten good knights, being suddenly unhorsed, fell stiff and powerless to the plain, fatally encumbered ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... plunged you to the very deeps, have stripped you of your manhood. And yet—yours is no murderer's face even when you scowl and clench your fist! 'Twas so you looked when you fought that rough boy on my behalf so many years ago when you were Sir Martin the Knight-errant and I was Princess Damaris. And now, Martin, you that were my playmate and had forgot—you that were so ready to fight on my behalf—in this desolation there is none you may do battle with for my sake saving ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... 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 ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... of a consistent and persevering nature. Action and enterprise were dearer to him, as yet, than the rewards which they proffered; and if baffled in one quarter, he turned himself, with the true spirit of the knight-errant, to any other field for his achievements. Louis, king of Hungary, stern, warlike, implacable, seeking vengeance for the murder of his brother, the ill-fated husband of Joanna, (the beautiful and guilty Queen of Naples—the Mary ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of a knight-errant Cochrane added the shrewd and humorous sagacity of a Scotchman. If he had commanded fleets he would have rivalled the victories of Nelson, and perhaps even have outshone the Nile and Trafalgar. And to warlike genius of the first order Cochrane added a ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... "Don Quixote" as a country gentleman of La Mancha, full of Castilian honor and enthusiasm, but so completely crazed by reading the most famous books of chivalry, that he not only believes them to be true, but feels himself called upon to become the impossible knight-errant they describe, and actually goes forth into the world, like them, to defend the oppressed and avenge the injured. To complete his chivalrous equipment, which he had begun by fitting up for himself a suit of armor strange to his century, he took an esquire out ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... 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 in the law courts? That I cannot say. The nature of things ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... in the mirror and shook a disapproving head. "You're no knight-errant," I told my impassive image. "You're too correct, too indifferent-looking altogether. Better not get beyond your depth!" I decided for luncheon, followed by a leisurely knotting of the threads of my Parisian acquaintance. Then, as if some malign ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... upon these regions of delight, the peace of his mind was at an end, and his only study was how to gain the affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel. In this enterprise, however, he had more real difficulties than generally fell to the lot of a knight-errant of yore, who seldom had anything but giants, enchanters, fiery dragons, and such like easily conquered adversaries, to contend with and had to make his way merely through gates of iron and brass, and walls of adamant to the castle keep, where the lady ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... Never could a man have stepped into the parlor a more perfect and predestined victim to the finished accomplishments of the Prime Minister. The Old World was tough in wickedness anyhow; the Old World's heart of stone might blunt the sharpest blade of the bravest knight-errant. But this blind and deaf Don Quixote was entering a cavern where the swift and glittering blade was in ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... inflicted there upon the Saracens; and although the fact that his generalship achieved this, might have caused some jealousy to the other commanders, this might have died away could he between the battles have been a general, and nothing more. But, alas! he is in addition a knight-errant—and such a knight-errant as Europe has never seen before. Wherever there is danger, Richard will plunge into the midst. There are brave men in all the three armies; but the strongest and bravest are as children to King Richard. Alone he can ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... bride, the lovely Princess Sabra, in his castle near Coventry, soon levied a powerful army; and, setting sail, no longer as a knight-errant, but as a renowned general, he arrived with his forces on the coast of Portugal, where he was joined by the other six Champions, who each brought troops in proportion to the size of his country. So enchanted were the Portuguese with Saint George, ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... QUIXOTE, Don, famous knight-errant of Spain. Made some desperate conquests for his lady-love, and was defeated by a windmill. In all his defeats, however, he showed to the world that a laugh cuts deeper than a sword, and that satire would kill where a lance ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... rather exiguous pension. The officer in question, Ali Effendi Gifoon, was a typical Soudanese in face and figure. He looked like a large, grave, elderly monkey, but he was as brave as a lion and as courteous, as chivalrous, and as loyal as an Arthurian knight-errant. All the time there was in him a touch of the pathos that belongs to some noble animal. Slavery made him sad just as freedom made him loyal and grateful. I have seen many strange and picturesque people in my time, but of them ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... to 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 as they rode; for now out of the circling ranks ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Table, which, for the better part of a century, had been 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 ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... the doctor consented that his young hero, his little knight-errant, his dear son, should go to the distressed lady and open the good news to her, while the great Major Greyson, the warrior invincible, should go around with himself ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... every way inferior to the powerful machines I saw working along the southern frontier. Nevertheless it is a useful means of reconnaissance, nor is a journey in it devoid of interest. An armoured train! The very name sounds strange; a locomotive disguised as a knight-errant—the agent of civilisation in the habiliments of chivalry. Mr. Morley attired as Sir Lancelot would seem scarcely more incongruous. The possibilities of attack added to the keenness of the experience. We started at one o'clock. A company of the Dublin Fusiliers formed the garrison. Half were ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... Ford's mind off the matrimonial future of Mr Burns, and brought him into prominence in his capacity of knight-errant. She laughed happily. The contemplation of Mr Burns as knight-errant healed the sting of defeat. The affair of Mr Mennick began to appear in the light ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... 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 ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... the yard to water his mules, and this he could not do while the armor lay in the horse-trough. As Don Quixote saw the man come up, "Take heed, rash Knight," he cried. "Defile not by a touch the armor of the most brave knight-errant that ever ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... could not make so much of any one else, with the safety of their honour."—Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, p. 70. How near the character of the duellist, originally, approached to that of the knight-errant, appears from a transaction, which took place at the siege of Juliers, betwixt this Balagny and Lord Herbert. As these two noted duellists stood together in the trenches, the Frenchman addressed Lord Herbert: "Monsieur, on dit que vous etes un des plus braves de votre nation, et je suis Balagny; ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... ring: "Come forth, O Williams, wherefore thus supine Remain within thy chambers after nine? Come forth, suffer thyself to be admired, And blush not so, coy dean, to be desired." The captive churchman chafes with empty rage, Till some knight-errant free him from his cage. Pale fear and anger sit upon yon face Erst full of love and piety and grace, But not pale fear nor anger will undo The iron might of gimlet and of screw. Grin at the window, Williams, all is vain; ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... way to Madame Bernard's, and Juliet's knight-errant was weary, after an exhausting day in town. He paused outside the gate long enough to clean the dust from his shoes with the most soiled of his two handkerchiefs, then went boldly up the steps ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... to England a sort of Yankee knight-errant to fight for his country. He had the wisdom to fight with his visor down, and quarter on the enemy. He took heavy tribute from Blackwood and others for his articles vindicating America, which came ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... no further; put them in your pocket; and to relieve our position of any shadow of embarrassment, tell me by what name I am to address my knight-errant, for I find myself reduced to the awkwardness of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the three millions of slaves in the United States; but it is not on a question of sympathy that I dare involve this country, or any country, in a war which must cost an incalculable amount of treasure and of blood. It is not my duty to make this country the knight-errant of the human race, and to take upon herself the protection of the thousand millions of human beings who have been permitted by the Creator of all things ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... had become clear at last that so long as Elizabeth was alive Philip would not willingly sanction the landing of a Spanish army on English shores. Thus, among the more ardent Catholics, especially the refugees at the Seminary at Rheims, a crown in heaven was held out to any spiritual knight-errant who would remove the obstacle. The enterprise itself was not a difficult one. Elizabeth was aware of her danger, but she was personally fearless. She refused to distrust the Catholics. Her household was full of them. She admitted anyone to her presence who desired a private ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... that Zachary Grey, in his copiously illustrated edition of the poem, may have quoted Sir John Mandeville's account of this notable adventure, in his wanderings, like a true knight-errant, through Scythia, Armenia, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Media, Persia, Chaldea, Greece, Dalmatia, Belgium, &c. He wrote an Itinerary of his travels in English, French, and Latin. In these he occupied nearly forty years, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various
... 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
... to the powerful machines I saw working along the southern frontier. Nevertheless it is a useful means of reconnaissance, nor is a journey in it devoid of interest. An armoured train! The very name sounds strange; a locomotive disguised as a knight-errant; the agent of civilisation in the habiliments of chivalry. Mr. Morley attired as Sir Lancelot would seem scarcely more incongruous. The possibilities of attack added to the keenness of the experience. We started at one o'clock. A company of the Dublin Fusiliers ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... He wanted pounds to expend upon those new books and music which served so often as the excuse for a visit to the Lawn. He wanted pounds for very trivial purposes; but he wanted them desperately. A lover without pounds is the most helpless and contemptible of mankind; he is a knight-errant without his armour, a troubadour without ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... scroll had been pawned to the merchant from whom he had obtained it, he instituted inquiries as to its owner, and ultimately restored the scroll to him with the addition of five gold ryo. The owner was a knight-errant (ronin) named Imagawa Motome, who thereafter entered Masamune's service and ultimately rose to be a general of infantry (ashigaru). The sympathy which taught Masamune to estimate the pain with which the owner of the scroll must have parted with it was a fine trait of character. Another incident ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... back there in an hour, of course, and exchange them. MY old crock's so blessed shabby. He's sure to be spiteful too. Have me run in, perhaps. Then she'd be in just the same old fix, only worse. You see, I'm her Knight-errant. It ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... one of the finest courtiers and certainly the most complete knight-errant of his time. He was now in the fortieth year of his age, had travelled, and had seen some military service; but the tilt-yard was ever the scene of his most conspicuous exploits and those in which he placed his highest ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... back on it, the most bitter portion of his own wrecked life was the short time he had yet thought happy; three months, spent as knight-errant. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... found in him a kinsman who was more than kind. To his intimates he appeared as a friend in need who is a friend indeed. To the man who had done him some service, of tenacious memory. To the victim of injustice, a knight-errant. And to those who had incurred danger by his side, a saviour second only ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... last long; for the silvered party, exasperated by their loss, resolved to perish or stop her progress; and having posted an archer in ambuscado on a distant angle, together with a knight-errant, her highness fell into their hands and was carried out of the field. The rest were soon routed after the taking of their queen, who, without doubt, from that time resolved to be more wary and keep near her king, without venturing so far amidst ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... doing, you're starting out to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that, you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel alert and dashing, like a jolly old knight-errant or something of that kind. I felt that I was with her in this thing ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... arrived from which my future life was to be reckoned. I was dressed and sent out to conquer, with a heart beating like that of an old knight-errant at his first sally. Scholars have told me of a Spartan matron, who, when she armed her son for battle, bade him bring back his shield, or be brought upon it. My venerable parent dismissed me to a field, in her opinion of equal glory, with a command ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... train bound for the leave boat, just before Christmas, the Knight-Errant, who also was returning to the front, re-wrote the well-known hymn of Phillips Brooks for me, to make the time pass. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... whites, and attack all who endeavour to penetrate into the forest. Don't be too rash, lad. Remember that it will not add to your lady-love's happiness to learn that you have been massacred in your attempt to carry out your knight-errant adventure, and if you are careless about your own life, don't forget that its loss will probably entail the loss of your brother's also. Dangers, of course, you must meet and face, but remember that prudence is a valuable aid ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... and that sagacious prince, having used every argument which might shake his purpose of returning to the imperial city, to the very point of making it a quarrel with him in person, at length abandoned him to his own discretion, and pointed him out to the Count of Thoulouse, as he passed, as a wild knight-errant, incapable of being influenced by any thing save his own wayward fancy. "He brings not five hundred men to the crusade," said Godfrey; "and I dare be sworn, that even in this, the very outset of the undertaking, he knows not where these five hundred men are, and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 he had ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... know, Nell," he said, when for a while he stopped the horses under a great bread-fruit tree from which Kali and Mea cut off fruit resembling huge melons, "at times it seems to me that I am a knight-errant." ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and obstacles could cure a knight-errant of his sentiment, then Jimmy Hambleton had been free of his passion for the Face. His plunge overboard had been followed by a joyous swim, a lusty call to the yacht for "Help," and a growing amazement when he realized that it was the yacht's intention to pass him by. He had swum valiantly, determined ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... 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
... had never 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, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Knight-errant of the Never-ending Quest, And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire; For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre To some unearthly music, and possessed With painful passionate longing to invest The golden dream of Love's ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... Margaret was not one of those fair and fanciful creations, endowed with such exquisite sensibilities as to perceive and return the admiration of a young knight-errant with whom she had been associated by any romantic circumstance. Nor was her disposition of that impulsive kind which will permit the impression of a moment to overthrow the prejudices of years. But to her joy and surprise, she ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... wits were quite gone, he hit upon the strangest notion that ever madman in this world hit upon: and that was that he fancied it was right and requisite, as well for the support of his own honor as for the service of his country, that he should make a knight-errant of himself, roaming the world over in full armor and on horseback in quest of adventures, and putting in practise himself all that he had read of as being the usual practises of knights-errant; righting every kind of wrong, and exposing himself to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... then became Charles V. He was no knight-errant like his father, and his diplomatic gifts, tact, and patience made him much better fitted than John for outwitting his English enemies and for restoring order to France. Slowly but surely he grappled with the companies, and at last an opening ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon all its sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the exchange a region of enchantment. It elevates the merchant into a kind of knight-errant, or rather a commercial Quixote. The slow but sure gains of snug percentage become despicable in his eyes; no "operation" is thought worthy of attention that does not double or treble the investment. No business is worth following that does not ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... As he spoke, the knight-errant, who had remounted his warhorse, galloped forward to the royal stand, with a silken kerchief bound round his wounded arm. The setting sun cast a ruddy glare upon his burnished arms, and sent his long black shadow streaming behind him up the level clearing. Pulling up ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was one of these zealous students of the sixteenth century. We see him first in a Dominican convent, but the old- world scholasticism had no charms for him. The narrow groove of the cloister was irksome to his freedom-loving soul. He cast off his monkish garb, and wandered through Europe as a knight-errant of philosophy, multum ille et terris jactatus et alto, teaching letters. In 1580 we find him at Geneva conferring with Calvin and Beza, but Calvinism did not commend itself to his philosophic mind. Thence he journeyed to Paris, where in 1582 he produced one of his more important ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... but 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)
... by inclining somewhat to the right; and I had so much faith also in True's sagacity that I had hopes he would find it. However, I gave him more credit than he deserved. He was always happy in the woods, like a knight-errant in search of adventures, plenty of which he was ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... natural. From that time on she had pinned her girlish faith to the coat-sleeve of the tall, reserved young cavalryman. To him she was a child, even younger by a year than the little sister he had left, and of whom he soon began to tell her. To her he was a young knight-errant, the hero of a budding maiden's shyest, sweetest, fondest fancy, and ere long the idol of the dreams and thoughts she dared not whisper even to herself. Paquita, with the wisdom of elder sisterhood, more than half believed ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... 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 to public service would be the State-servant who was attached to his task solely by want, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... knight-errantry, Sancho left with a sigh, and a tear in his eye, for never in his life had he lived so well. However, he saw to it that he was well provisioned before they departed. Don Quixote was anxious to see the poet turn knight-errant, he said, but since his parents no doubt would not permit him to give up his chosen work he thought it best not to attempt to sway them in their convictions. And so he and his squire took leave with many courtesies, while Don Diego and his family were pitying the ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... had finish'd my Serenade, and had put up my Pipes to be gone, out stalk'd me your two-handed Lady, with a Man at her Girdle like a bunch of Keys, whom I taking for nothing less than some one who had some foul design upon the Gentlewoman, like a true Knight-Errant, did ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... monsters arose from the bottom, near the shore, where he had been lurking, opposed his further progress, and a conflict instantly ensued. The daring assailant I distinguished to be a sword-fish, or sea-unicorn, the knight-errant of the sea, attacking every thing in its domain; his head is as hard and as rough as a rock, out of the centre of which grows horizontally an ivory spear, longer and far tougher than any warrior's lance; with this weapon he fights. The shark, with a jaw larger and stronger than a crocodile's, with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... the Constable,—"I am no knight-errant, to bind myself by promise to grant it ere I know its import; but do thou come to my pavilion to-morrow, and thou wilt not find me unwilling ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... athlete, and ambitious to raise the name of Scotland among the nations. His weakness lay mainly in a boyish impulsiveness, which often caused him to mar well-laid plans on the spur of the moment, and in an exaggerated fondness for chivalric ideas more appropriate to a knight-errant than to a king or a leader of armies. Perkin appealed to him as early as 1492; and before the pretender's expedition sailed, Tyrconnel, chief of the O'Donnells of the north-west of Ireland, presented himself in Scotland ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Welles, with the sweetest magnanimity. "Sweet Mrs Phoebe is a woodland bird, untrammelled as yet by those fetters which we men and women of the world must needs bear. 'Tis truly delightful to see the charming generosity and the admirable fire with which she plays the knight-errant. Indeed, Madam, such disinterested warmth and fervour of heart are seen but too seldom in this worn old world. Suffer me to entreat you not to chide Mrs Phoebe for her charming simplicity and ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... King, "we might credit thy tongue, wench, but for the prayers. No digressions, spider Nell. My sword is in a fighting mood. 'Sdeath, call forth the knight-errant who holds thy errant heart secure for one ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... Madame," said Annesley, recovering with an effort his wonted sang-froid, "I was merely endeavouring to calm the rhapsodies of my friend, who seemed disposed to throw himself at your feet in knight-errant fashion." ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... 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 game might ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from 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
... would oppress me if the directions were absent. If I have to forge the armour for myself I should be in despair. But I can go to the armoury of grace, where there is an ever-open door and abundant welcome for every person who fain would be a knight-errant of the Lord. The Lord will provide me with perfect equipment suitable for every kind of contest which may meet me along the road. There are no favourites among the pilgrims except, perhaps, the neediest, and to them is given "more ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... porcelain, which we were told were presents to us from the Emperor, and we consequently made our bows as they passed. We were also amused with a Chinese puppet-shew which differs but little from an English one. There are a distressed princess confined in a castle, and a knight-errant, who, after fighting wild beasts and dragons, sets her at liberty and marries her; wedding-feasts, jousts, and tournaments. Besides these, there was also a comic drama, in which some personages not unlike punch and his wife, Bandemeer and Scaramouch performed capital ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... words of Mr. Wordsworth's own epitome, "his apprehensions that he had detained his auditors too long—invites them to his house—Solitary, disinclined to comply, rallies the Wanderer, and somewhat playfully draws a comparison between his itinerant profession and that of a knight-errant—which leads to the Wanderer giving an account of changes in the country, from the manufacturing spirit—Its favourable effects— The other side of the picture," etc., etc. After these very poetical themes are exhausted, they all go into the house, where they are introduced to the Vicar's wife ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... proceeds, puppy, studio, survey, attorney, arch, belief, chief, charity, half, hero, negro, majority, Mary, vortex, memento, joy, lily, knight-templar, knight-errant, why, 4, x, son-in-law, Miss Smith, Mr. Anderson, country-man, hanger-on, major-general, oxen, geese, man-servant, brethren, strata, sheep, mathematics, pride, money, pea, head, piano, veto, knives, ratios, alumni, feet, wolves, president, sailor-boy, spoonful, ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... Sepia, holding fast by Godfrey's hand, and coming up with a little pant. "What a lovely day it is for your haymaking! How can you afford the time to play knight-errant ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... he said; "so you are off again, like a veritable knight-errant of romance, in search of ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... might seem wild, even insane in their extravagance, sung by some ancient forgotten poet; or possibly the motto of some love-sick knight-errant, whose passion was consumed to ashes long centuries ago. But not wild nor insane to me, dwelling alone on a vast stony plain in everlasting twilight, where there was no motion, nor any sound; but all things, even trees, ferns, and grasses, ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... at seeing the name of Mac Fane! That is, of the gambler and bully who some time ago had been attempting to plunder brother Edward; and who had been so successfully opposed by the family knight-errant, Henley! Among the busy conjectures of my fermenting brain concerning the instruments I might happen to want, should things as they have done come to an extremity, the supposed qualifications of this hero had more than once ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... dropping down the Guadalquivir, took his departure from the bay of Cadiz, on the 25th of September, 1493; presenting a striking contrast to the melancholy plight, in which, but the year previous, he sallied forth like some forlorn knight-errant, on a ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... having cut the escort to pieces, slew also the merchants and travellers. He seemed to give the sword the more heartily in that he sought it for himself, but could never get it. No doubt he deserved to get it. He performed deeds of impossible foolhardy gallantry, the deeds of a knight-errant; rode solitary, made single-handed rescues, suffered himself to be cut off from his posts, and then with a handful of knights, or alone, indeed, carved his way back to Darum. Des Barres, the Earl of Leicester and the Grand Master, never left his side; Gaston of Bearn used to sleep at ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... all this was somewhat inconsiderate and ungallant and slightly humiliating; I should have taken the part of the knight-errant rescuing the damsel in distress, but at that moment only the direct essentials entered ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... passion was as that of Brian de Bois-Guilbert for mere strength, except that he was bound by no vows of celibacy. There were no moonlit platonics about Barty's robust love, but all the chivalry and tenderness and romance of a knight-errant underlay its vigorous complexity. He was a good ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... 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 ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... everything that creepeth or that flyeth, so that when I am abroad under the sky and behold those things about me I am whiles like to weep for very joy of them. Wherefore it is, Croisette, that I would rather be a knight-errant in this world which I love so greatly than to be a king seated upon a throne with a golden crown upon my head and all men kneeling unto me. Yea; meseems that because of my joy in these things I have no ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... not distressed, my good knight-errant," said the Nun: "the fair Quaker will be too hard for half-a-dozen antagonists, and wants not your protection:—but your poor Nun bespeaks it," whispered she, "who has not a word to say for herself." Mr. B. answered her in Italian (I wish I understood Italian!)—and ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... of tastes and sentiments which have long since passed away. It represents not only a vanished taste in architecture, but sentiments also which are now even more remote. The Earl of Harrington, under whom the Gothic transfiguration was accomplished, seems to have regarded himself as a species of knight-errant. Round the fluted pillars by which the roof of the hall is supported—a hall which he christened "the Hall of the Fair Star"—were strapped imitation lances, and the windows were darkened by scrolls which all bore the same motto, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... poetry in him, five minutes later, as the long rapier swung round his head, redder and redder at every sweep? We are befooled by names. Call him Crusader instead of Roundhead, and he seems at once (granting him only sincerity, which he had, and that of a right awful kind) as complete a knight-errant as ever watched and prayed, ere putting on his spurs, in fantastic Gothic chapel, beneath 'storied windows richly dight.' Was there no poetry in him, either, half an hour afterwards, as he lay bleeding across the corpse of the gallant horse, waiting for his turn with the surgeon, ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... horse is a mule—what a pity it was not some knight-errant! but I have heard that these fine gentry no ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... fence in front: the 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
... had one comb betwixt them. On his head was a velvet cap, much resembling a black saucepan, and on his side hung a little basket. At last we arrived at the King's Head, where the loyalty of the doctor induced him to alight; and then, knight-errant-like, he took his damsels from off their palfreys, and courteously handed us into the inn.' . . . The party returned to the Wells; and 'the silver Cynthia held up her lamp in the heavens' the while. 'The night silenced all but our divine doctor, who sometimes uttered things fit to be spoken in ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... nightcap—a subject which seems to have interested him profoundly; he permitted himself to say in his journal that he was so much pleased with some pretty ladies' maids at the Duke of Argyll's, that he felt he could "have been a knight-errant for them," and his "venerable fellow-traveller" read the passage without censuring his levity. The great man himself could be equally volatile. "I have often thought," he observed one day, to Boswell's amusement, "that if I kept a seraglio, the ladies should all wear ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... reasonable course. Bethink you, this is no knight-errant venture; we are two of Dan Morgan's soldiers bent upon doing a thing most needful for the welfare of the country and its cause. 'Tis a duty higher than any obligation friendship lays on Richard Jennifer ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... female fashions for 1851 quite 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 can so ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... too late 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, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... the natives, sympathize with the missionaries, talk with profound theorists, recite well in Greek or mathematics, conduct an advanced class in geometry, and make no end of fun for little children." He had had the training of a missionary station in a Robinson Crusoe-like variety of functions. A knight-errant to the core, the atmosphere of Williams under Hopkins gave him his consecration. His comrades recognized him as an intellectual leader, essentially religious but often startlingly unconventional, "under great terrestrial headway," "the most ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... country in France that a little peasant boy whose name was destined to become famous in the annals of his country led his father's sheep, that they might crop the scanty pasture. Vincent was a homely little boy, but he had the soul of a knight-errant, and the grace of God shone from eyes that were never to lose their merry gleam ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... hoop-poles left by a chopper and went on his way along shaded woodland paths, avoiding the main highroad. He decided that it would be better to go by the roundabout way and show himself on the streets of town instead of on a rural turnpike where countrified horses did not take kindly to a real knight-errant. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... unrecognized. These reasons should not have, and probably 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 were scattered on various ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... York?" interrupted I; for I did not wish to hear the poor little fellow's list of miseries, which I knew by heart beforehand without his telling me, having been hopeless knight-errant of oppressed ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the vain and premature hypotheses of the physiologists of his day that the greatest and noblest intellect in Greece revolted. Socrates was the knight-errant of philosophy. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... 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 way ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the disinterested and chivalrous Champlain was not the enthusiasm of La Salle, nor had he any part in the self-devoted zeal of the early Jesuit explorers. He belonged not to the age of the knight-errant and the saint, but to the modern world of practical study and practical action. He was the hero, not of a principle nor of a faith, but simply of a fixt idea and a determined purpose. As often happens ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... "The Wickliffe boy—is a knight-errant born out of time," she said. "I'm wondering if it will last. We came to know him last summer—mother and I—down at Hollymount, my uncle's place in Virginia. The Wickliffe boy, Billy by name, lives at Lyonesse, which is Hollymount's next neighbor. It belongs to Billy's uncle, the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... having already parted with the substance. Like all women she is timid, and incapable of a great resolution! How many letters have I not written to her since I last saw her! After the battle of Eylau—like a miserable adventurer—a knight-errant—I went in disguise to the village where she had at length promised to meet me at her brother's house. What a wretched rendezvous it was! Nothing but a farewell scene! She desires to go into a convent, and give her heart to God, because she is not allowed ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... the knight-errant of never-ending space, a wicked comet. To Arizona gave he playthings many: the rattlesnake, hairy tarantelas and stinging scorpions, horned toads and centipedes, a scented hydrophobia-cat, the Gila monster, a Mexican and the Apache; ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... wrong, though six years were to pass before they met: the mystic, Israel Kensky, Cherry Bim the modern knight-errant, and Malcolm Hay. ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... Hermione for her money. It was hateful to think that this might be said of him in the years to come. It was even possible that she herself might come to believe it of him, and John Delancy Curtis's knight-errant soul shrank and cringed under the thought, even while the memory of Hermione's first kiss of love was still hot ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... of Hainault, and the words used by the latter in undertaking the enterprise were the echo of the chivalric feeling of the time. As soon as the arrival of Queen Isabel in Hainault was known, "this Sir John, being at that time very young and panting for glory, like a knight-errant mounted his horse, and, accompanied by a few persons, set out from Valenciennes for Ambreticourt, where he arrived in the evening and paid the Queen every respect and honour." Notwithstanding the remonstrances and objections which were raised against his undertaking so perilous ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... 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 would sheath ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... his ability to catch and properly kill a hog was as genuine as the old knight-errant's pride in his ability to stick a knife into another steel-clothed brigand like himself. When the slain shote was swung upon the planking on the sled before the barrel, Daddy rested, while the boys filled the barrel with water from ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... mankind. Of course, in a community so organized, what can a man of honorable and humane feelings do, but shut his eyes all he can, and harden his heart? I can't buy every poor wretch I see. I can't turn knight-errant, and undertake to redress every individual case of wrong in such a city as this. The most I can do is to try and keep out of the ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with eglantine and roses in their neatly-braided hair, went hand in hand to the flowery mead to weave garlands for their lambkins. If by chance some rude, uncivil fellow dared to molest them, or attempted to throw thorns in their path, there was sure to be a knight-errant not far off ready to rush forward in their defence. But alas! in these degenerate days it is not so. Should a harmless cottage-maid wander out of the highway to pluck a primrose or two in the neighbouring field, the haughty owner sternly bids ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... speak, there is but one who can think; for a thousand who can think, there is but one who can see," and to this youth was given the open vision. In the hour of fame the rich and great vied to do him honor, and every door opened at his touch. But he turned aside to become the knight-errant of the poor. Walking along Whitechapel road he saw multitudes of shopmen and shopwomen whose stint was eighty hours a week, who toiled mid poisoned air until the brain reeled, the limbs trembled, and worn out physically and mentally they succumbed ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... entered into eager conversation with her. He forgot the foolishness of his action, forgot the wrong he was doing to the girl by filling her mind with thoughts about himself—for he could see that she was attracted by him. To her he seemed some knight-errant like those she had read about in the stories which her stepmother had forbidden her to read. His mode of speech, his appearance, his sunny laugh, all made her realise that there was a world hitherto unknown to her, but which ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... remain a dream. And now by some magic jugglery of ordinary events, each well within the bounds of credibility, yet so overwhelmingly incredible in their sequence and completeness, he was Sylvia's lover, her defender, her trusted knight-errant. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... field-officer, who made valour his profession; and who, if you deprived him of his honour, was like to be deprived of his bread at the same time.—Ha, ha, ha! it reminds one of Don Quixote, who took his neighbour, Samson Carrasco, for a knight-errant." ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... necessary law of nature—another feeling took root and grew also. Fired by stories of a past, in which wealth and position had been won by his forefathers, he conceived the idea of becoming in his own person a hero—a knight-errant. And in the grimy, common alley; in the poor, bare sitting-room where his mother sewed unendingly; in the dark closet under the slates where at night he dreamed his child's dreams, he built castles such as never stood upon ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... crisis now threatening Babbiano a captain is needed for its ruler. But let not this delude you, for there may come a season in the fortunes of the State when such a man might be as unfitted for dominion as is the present Duke in this. What then? A good knight-errant is an indifferent courtier and a bad statesman. Lastly, my friends—since you must know all that is in my heart—there remains the fact that I love myself a little. I love my liberty too well, and I have no mind to stifle in the scented atmosphere of courts. You see I am ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... knight-errant's hand, Anna sighed, and resigned herself for once to the unaccustomed pleasure of doing as she ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... a redresser of grievances; there only wanted a lady in the way to be a knight-errant in form. This defect was soon supplied; I presently had two. I frequently went to see my father at Nion, a small city in the Vaudois country, where he was now settled. Being universally respected, the affection entertained for ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... 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 ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... his life—against the possibility of life after death; but it is also because he feels that, despite such conclusive arguments, his will to live perseveres, that he refuses to his intellect the power to kill his faith. A knight-errant of the spirit, as he himself calls the Spanish mystics, he starts for his adventures after having, like Hernan Cortes, burnt his ships. But, is it necessary to enhance his figure by literary comparison? ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... matter how it manifested 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 ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... 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 for them. [Footnote: On reflection, at the distance of several years, I wonder that my venerable fellow-traveller should have read this passage without ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... with a donkey, is there? 1 assure you I did not mean anything personal; and now for a word of sense. Bumpus, at the Green Man, has got a tremendous horse, which nearly frightened me into fits the only time I ever mounted him, so that it will just suit you; nobody but a green man, or a knight-errant, which I consider much the same sort of thing, would patronise such an animal—still, he's the only one I ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... times the Lords can refuse nothing to the Ladies. In moving the second reading of a Bill to enable women to become solicitors Lord BUCKMASTER may have approached his subject in the spirit of a cautious knight-errant, as Lord SUMNER said, but he carried his argument. He owed something, perhaps, to the unintentional assistance of his opponents. Lord BUCKMASTER had incidentally mentioned that a woman once sat on the Woolsack, and there administered such very odd ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various |
