"Knight-errantry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... evidences of an infamous plot to drain Canadian traffic southward to United States ports and roads: to others they seemed to be philanthropic endeavours to rescue Western Canada from the clutches of monopoly. They were not, however, due to either political intrigue or knight-errantry, but to the same desire for profit which had led the Canadian Pacific to build up its great system in the western states. Other things being at all equal, it was of course desirable that Canadian traffic should ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... effectiveness—in short, that mysterious "virtu" by which the Renaissance set such great store. It had the negative value of providing artificial trials for young gentlemen with patrimony and no occupation who might otherwise be living idly on their country estates, or dissolutely in London. Knight-errantry, in chivalric society, had provided the hardships and discipline agreeable to youth; travel "for vertues sake, to apply the study of good artes,"[55] was in the Renaissance an excellent way to keep a young man profitably busy. ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... incarnate. Here in the form of an armored man on horseback was the quintessence of the Age of Chivalry—not the Age of Chivalry as exemplified by the vain and boasting nobles who had constituted nine-tenths of the knight-errantry profession and who had used the quest of the Holy Grail as an excuse to seek after mead and maidens, but the Age of Chivalry as it might have been if the ideal behind it had been shared by the many instead of ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... late form of society to which they belong. Roland is a variation on the one perpetual heroic theme; it has a grander setting, a grander accompaniment, than Byrhtnoth or Waldere, but it is essentially the old story of the heroic age,—no knight-errantry, but the last resistance of a man ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... fishing-craft of Gloucester and Marblehead,—one was of twelve, the other of fifteen tons,—held their way across the Atlantic, passed the tempestuous headlands of Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence, and, with adventurous knight-errantry, glided deep into the heart of the Canadian wilderness. On board of one of them was the Breton merchant, Pontgrave, and with him a man of spirit widely different, a Catholic of good family,—Samuel de Champlain, born in 1567 at the small seaport of Bronage ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Spain, what could make the pupils understand better the spirit of knight-errantry, its faults and its qualities, than a recital from "Don Quixote" or from the tale of ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... give up political knight-errantry and to stick to sober business. Very carefully and in the most conservative spirit I took stock of the situation. I was still a couple of years on the right side of fifty, young looking for my age (an advantage), a desirable ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... solemn scene upon the white page of the boy's mind. A spirit of religion has breathed through it all, so exalted, so warm, so personal; the passionate mediaeval Christianity which expressed itself in crusades and religious orders and knight-errantry. The cry of the Saviour (Erloesung's Held, Hero of Redemption, the poet characteristically calls him) has rung so piercingly, there seems but one answer from a humanly constituted simple heart: "Did you indeed suffer so much and die for love of me and ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... illustrates more than one point in the feelings of the time. The two princes, William and Geoffrey, give a mutual challenge; each gives the other notice of the garb and shield that he will wear that he may not be mistaken. The spirit of knight-errantry was coming in, and we see that William himself in his younger days was touched by it. But we see also that coat-armour was as yet unknown. Geoffrey and his host, so the Normans say, shrink from the challenge and decamp in the ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... in mitigation of the Tyro's regrettable fickleness, he—to his shame be it chronicled—having practically forgotten the woe-begone damsel's very existence within eighteen short hours after his adventure in knight-errantry. Her tear-ravaged and untidy plainness had, in that brief time, been exorcised from memory by a more potent interest, that of Beauty on her imperial throne. Setting forth the facts in their due order, it befell ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... strength, activity, and extravagance of behaviour. Although nothing could be more ludicrous and unnatural than the figures they drew, they did not want patrons and admirers; and the world actually began to be infected with the spirit of knight-errantry, when Cervantes, by an inimitable piece of ridicule, reformed the taste of mankind, representing chivalry in the right point of view, and converting romance to purposes far more useful and entertaining, by making it assume ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... to look upon chivalry merely as a knightly institution which had to do solely with tournaments, banquets, knight-errantry, and the rescuing of encastled maidens. The modern acceptance of the term omits all those gentle qualities of mind which go to make the true chivalric disposition. We associate chivalry with 'fair play' combined with ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... But the distinguishing flavor and quality of this religion arises from its spiritual hospitality. It is not, like Platonism, a contemplation of the best; nor, like pluralistic idealisms, a moral knight-errantry. It is neither a religion of exclusion, nor a religion of reconstruction, but a profound willingness that things should be as they really are. For this reason its devotees have recognized in Spinoza their true forerunner. ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... "Knight-errantry, by the Host!" quoth he, and his brows shot up on his steep brow. Then they came down again to scowl. "No doubt, my preux-chevalier, you will have definite knowledge of the groundlessness of these same slanders," he said, moving backwards, away from me, towards the door; and as he moved now his feet ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... afterwards perceived, that immense gain would accrue to the Exchequer from the maintenance of this station as a port of entree into the Netherlands for English manufactures; and though at a day when knight-errantry was infinitely more in vogue than commercial enterprise, these interests were carefully studied, so that the conquest of a small piratical town was turned to vastly better account than ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... me, a little while ago," said he, mustering up courage, with an effort, to speak to this wondrous mass of knight-errantry; "at all events the Diamond-drop, of which I know you are the fragments, told me you were going to some Palace in the sky. Where ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... how much of her thought it would be justifiable to confide to her companion. A certain vein of knight-errantry in her character inclined her to set lance in rest and ride forth, rather recklessly, to redress human wrongs. But in redressing one wrong it too often happens that another wrong—or something perilously approaching one—must be inflicted. To save pain in one direction is, unhappily, to inflict ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... not only what Boiardo did, but what he intended to do; for as its subject is Orlando's love, and knight-errantry in general, so its object was to extol the house of Este, and deduce it from its fabulous ancestor Ruggiero. Orlando is the open, Ruggiero the covert hero; and almost all the incidents of this supposed irregular poem, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... extravagant fondness herein arrived at that pitch, that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase books of knight-errantry, and carried home all he could lay hands on of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... squat little man rolled forward, affectionate concern on his great ugly face, and he set one of his podgy hands on his godson's shoulder. "Now listen to me, Andre," he reasoned. "This is sheer knight-errantry—moonshine, lunacy. You'll come to no good by it if you persist. You've read 'Don Quixote,' and what happened to him when he went tilting against windmills. It's what will happen to you, neither more nor less. Leave things as they are, my boy. I wouldn't ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... and 'all' the Works of CERVANTES, but chiefly of his Don Quixote. The Ridicule of Knight-Errantry shewn to have been but a secondary object in the mind of the Author, and not the principal Cause of the Delight which the Work continues to give in all Nations, and under all the ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... students, until within thirty years Japan slumbered still in the Knight-time of the Middle Ages, and so long as a man carried about with him continually two beautiful swords he felt it incumbent upon him to use them. The happy days of knight-errantry have passed. These same cavaliers of Samurai are now thankful to police the streets in spectacles necessitated by the too diligent study of German text, and arrest chance disturbers of the public peace for a miserably ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... was born at Florence in the year 1432, and who was deeply versed in the Bible, composed a poem, called the "Morgante Maggiore," which he recited at the table of Lorenzo de Medici, the great patron of Italian genius. It is a mock-heroic and religious poem, in which the legends of knight-errantry, and of the Popish Church, are turned to unbounded ridicule. The pretended hero of it is a converted giant, called Morgante; though his adventures do not occupy the twentieth part of the poem, the principal personages being Charlemagne, Orlando, and his cousin Rinaldo of Montalban. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Florentine invented neither his stories nor his " plot," if we may so call it. He wrote in the middle of the fourteenth century (1344-8) when the West had borrowed many things from the East, rhymes[FN8] and romance, lutes and drums, alchemy and knight-errantry. Many of the "Novelle" are, as Orientalists well know, to this day sung and recited almost textually by the wandering tale-tellers, bards, and rhapsodists of ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... danger to which my incautious knight-errantry has exposed me; I begin, indeed, to take you for a very mischievous sort of person, and I fear the poor devil from whom I rescued you will be amply revenged for his disgrace, by finding that the first use you make of your freedom is to doom your deliverer ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... admiration—but without solicitation, or plea, or privilege, she must be wanting to assist and befriend her.—Before Emma had forfeited her confidence, and about the third time of their meeting, she heard all Mrs. Elton's knight-errantry on the subject.— ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... adventurous lives of Western pioneers and immigrants has suggested nearly as many stories as the chivalric deeds of knight-errantry. These tales of frontier life are, however, as a rule, characterized by such wildness of fancy and such extravagancy of language that we have often wondered why another Cervantes did not ridicule our border romances by describing a second ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... avail themselves of the unique opportunities of the time—men who, loving liberty and hating oppression, took the law into their own hands and executed a rough and ready justice between the rich and the poor which embodied the best traditions of knight-errantry, whilst they themselves lived a free and merry life on the tolls they exacted from their wealthy victims. Such a man may well have been the original Robin Hood, a man who, when once he had captured the popular imagination, soon acquired heroic reputation and was credited ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... made; and the full amount of her slumber is justly imputable to the gross darkness which so long enveloped the horizon of Russia. Whose business was it to rouse her? What nation could be supposed to possess so much of the spirit of knight-errantry, as to be induced to instruct her savages as to the advantages of cultivating commerce, without a cautious regard to its own particular interests in the first place? But the bold, though somewhat impolitic seaman, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... Since his adventure in knight-errantry Christopher Parish had suffered terrible alternations of hope and despair. For fear of offending Miss Sparkes he did not press for an explanation of the errand on which she had sent him enough that he was ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... families of France. But the boiling valour of these fiery youths was equally difficult to restrain or direct; and, after losing two-thirds of their number in desperate, but irregular, sallies against the Turkish lines, the survivors of this piece of knight-errantry re-embarked for Christendom in January, leaving the heads of their fallen comrades ranged on pikes before the tent of Kiuprili. A stancher reinforcement was received in the spring of 1669, by the arrival of 3000 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... of my holidays was to escape with a chosen friend, who had the same taste with myself, and alternately to recite to each other such wild adventures as we were able to devise. We told, each in turn, interminable tales of knight-errantry and battles and enchantments, which were continued from one day to another as opportunity offered, without our ever thinking of bringing them to a conclusion. As we observed a strict secrecy on the subject of this intercourse, it acquired all the character ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... rising over the memory of a red sunset, dark shadows and glowing orange lamps, beauty somewhere mysteriously rapt away from him, tangible wrong in a brown suit and an unpleasant face, flouting him. Mr. Hoopdriver for the time, was in the world of Romance and Knight-errantry, divinely forgetful of his social position or hers; forgetting, too, for the time any of the wretched timidities that had tied him long since behind the counter in his proper place. He was angry and adventurous. It was all about him, this vivid drama he had fallen into, and it was eluding ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... character, in which all the elements of love, chivalry, and religion were blended together, resembled that of some paladin of romance; as the chimerical enterprises, in which he was perpetually engaged, seem rather to belong to the age of knight-errantry, than to ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... notions. One is, that it should always be a subject. For example, a history of Piracy; in connexion with which there is a vast deal of extraordinary, romantic, and almost unknown matter. A history of Knight-errantry, and the wild old notion of the Sangreal. A history of Savages, showing the singular respects in which all savages are like each other; and those in which civilised men, under circumstances of difficulty, soonest ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... come to you, but for my father having contrived to clog my heels with fetters of a professional nature. I will tell you the matter at length, for it is comical enough; and why should not you list to my juridical adventures, as well as I to those of your fiddling knight-errantry? ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the finest thing in the collection. There is, however, a picture by Leslie, which his friends insist is the best in the exhibition. It represents the chaplain of the Duke leaving the table in a rage, after an harangue by Don Quixote in praise of knight-errantry. The suppressed mirth of the Duke and Duchess, the sly looks of the servants, the stormy anger of the ecclesiastic, and the serene gravity of the knight, are well expressed; but there is a stiffness in some ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... so rapturously of your enchanted castle, Thaddeus," returned his friend, "I believe I shall consider my knight-errantry, in being fool enough to trust myself amidst a fray in which I had no business, as one of the wisest acts ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... husband.... And Peggy, looking at this girl with the dark, tragic eyes and refined, pale face and graceful gestures, in the funny instinctive British way tried to place her socially. Was she a lady? It made such a difference. This was the girl for whom Doggie had performed his deed of knight-errantry; the girl whom she proposed to take back to Doggie. For the moment, discounting the uniform which might have hidden a midinette or a duchess, she had nothing but the face and the gestures and the beautifully modulated voice to go upon, and between the ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... had a warm regard. The very honesty of his character, his habit of saying just what he meant (so foreign to the Count's own practice), his ingenuous delight in all that he saw, his modern knight-errantry based upon an absurdly old-fashioned notion of right and wrong and justice and all such stuff as that, these were the very qualities to win the admiration of a man of the world who possessed none of them. Count Sergius said that the lad must suffer nothing. His intrigues with ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... age of knight-errantry is over—nothing for nothing is the ruling principle of our own prosaic day. To be plain with you, I can't afford to quarrel with Le Prun for nothing; and, if you persist in refusing my services, I must only make ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... excuse was valid; he could paint the interview from which he had just come so that Josephine would be moved by it, would welcome his interference, and come again to nurse her uncle's wife. Thus thinking, he had hurried along, but when he met Day his knight-errantry received a check. ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... For this the men rewarded him with praise and gifts and service, the women with love, the children with trust. He was glad he had been exiled. Of course, so soon as his father heard of his changed life and his courage in knight-errantry he repented his hardness of spirit and sent messengers to bid Kaululaau return. This was an unwelcome summons, and while he dared not refuse, he took his own time in getting home again, his alleged reason for delay being that he wished to see the world and further instruct himself; his ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner |
