Quotes & Sayings About Quixotic

It may have been quixotic, but it was magnificent. — J.M. Barrie

It seems quixotic today, with jet airplanes and overdoses of Nembutal, that a man would go through a war for something so insignificant as his state. — Harper Lee

The wolves were circling, wary of the might and presence of the kingly beasts who dared to challenge possession of the crown and so far, the lions had proved to be invincible. But should they drop their guard for an instant, or should the scavengers discover the quixotic virtue of their armor, all of the honor, pride, and passion in the world would not save them. It would, instead, be the cause of their ultimate downfall. — Marsha Canham

Time is quixotic because it can torment us. When we have insufficient stimulus to fill our lives, we resent the relentless quality of time, and we engage in activities designed to "kill time." Time that passes slowly creates insufferable boredom; time that passes to quickly makes us aware of our accelerated death march. A person's perspective on time depends mostly on what they are most afraid of, boredom or death. — Kilroy J. Oldster

QUIXOTIC, adj. Absurdly chivalric, like Don Quixote. An insight into the beauty and excellence of this incomparable adjective is unhappily denied to him who has the misfortune to know that the gentleman's name is pronounced Ke-ho-tay. — Ambrose Bierce

This too is a jihad. Yet we Americans find ourselves in the dangerous position of going to war not against a state but against a phantom. The jihad we have embarked upon is targeting an elusive and protean enemy. The battle we have begun is never-ending. But it may be too late to wind back the heady rhetoric. We have embarked on a campaign as quixotic as the one mounted to destroy us. — Chris Hedges

Wait," he said. "That's not a word."
I looked down to where, in a moment of desperation, I'd played zixic on a triple-word-score space.
"Uh, sure it is."
"What's it mean?"
"It's sort of like ... quixotic, but with more ... "
"Bullshit?"
I laughed out loud. I'd never heard him swear before.
"More zeal. Hence the z."
"Uh-huh. Use it in a sentence."
"Um ... 'You are a zixic writer.'"
"I don't believe this."
"That you're zixic?"
"That you're trying to cheat at Scrabble." He leaned back against my couch, shaking his head. "I mean, I was ready to accept the whole evil thing, but this is kind of extreme. — Richelle Mead

The characters in my novels, from the very first one, are always on some quixotic effort of attempting to control something that is uncontrollable - some element of the world that is essentially random and out of control. — John Irving

Apart from our union with Christ every effort to imitate Christ, no matter how noble and inspired at the outset, inevitably leads to legalism and spiritual defeat. But once you understand the doctrine of union with Christ, you see that God doesn't ask us to attain to what we're not. He only calls us to accomplish what already is. The pursuit of holiness is not a quixotic effort to do just what Jesus did. It's the fight to live out the life that has already been made alive in Christ. — Kevin DeYoung

We are all members of the same flawed species. Putting our moral vision into practice means imposing our will on others. The human lust for power and esteem, coupled with its vulnerability to self-deception and self-righteousness, makes that an invitation to a calamity, all the worse when the power is directed at a goal as quixotic as eradicating human self-interest. — Steven Pinker

The phase of the usury system which we are trying to analyze is more or less Patterson's perception that the Bank of England could have benefit of all the interest on all the money that it creates out of nothing ... Now the American citizen can, of course, appeal to his constitution, which states that Congress shall have power to coin money or regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin. Such appeal is perhaps quixotic. — Ezra Pound

Three of the brightest baseball pitchers of their times staged comebacks without much success - David Cone, Jim Bouton and Jim Palmer - but there was room to admire their quixotic gesture. — George Vecsey

Fear of death and the desire to live on, somehow, if only through our children. Or our grandchildren. Quixotic quest for immortality. It's sad and heroic and doomed - all at the same time. — Will Ferguson

It's strange, but I find myself more disillusioned by a man who has such easily persuaded views than I would be by one whose views were entirely opposite but passionately held. Isn't that quixotic of me? — Elizabeth Hoyt

Men like Crawford mistrusted Keynes because his views were unconfused. Throughout his life Keynes produced unimpeachable facts and figures, clear analyses, direct solutions and trenchant practical advice all based on the nitty-gritty of his subject, which were discounted by officials, politicians and bankers who dismissed him as academic, theoretical, quixotic, impractical. To them his clarity seemed too good to be true. — Richard Davenport-Hines

Ian Rankin's Rebus is the king of modern British crime fiction. He is dour, determined, and constantly falls foul of his seniors. For all this, we root for him. He is eminently loveable, a quixotic hero moving through the darker half of a Jekyll and Hyde Edinburgh. — Mark Billingham

Trust is tough since it involves that quixotic mix of integrity, vulnerability, and intimacy. But trust anyway. — Jeffrey Fry

And what I like best in you is this particular enthusiasm, which is not at all practical or sensible, which is downright Quixotic. You are not altogether what you seem, and you have your reservations. Living among the wolves, you have not become one. — Willa Cather

I understand there are inevitable things that we have to go through: heartbreak, family problems. I don't feel like some Quixotic idiot who says, 'We don't have to feel pain.' No! Let's feel it, let's make it work for ourselves. But I want us all to be able to get past it. — Drew Barrymore

Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not. — Robert McNamara

If you think back to the fight over drones, when I was proud to be standing shoulder to shoulder with Rand Paul filibustering for 13 hours, that was viewed as a fringe issue, as a quixotic issue, and yet millions of Americans engaged, spoke up, got online. — Ted Cruz

It sometimes seems as if curbing entropy is our quixotic purpose in this universe. — James Gleick

Nothing is ever as it seems nor is it otherwise. — Various

One might come up with other and kinder distinctions (I shall not be doing so) but the plain fact about the senator from New York is surely that she is a known quantity who has already been in the White House purely as the result of a relationship with a man, and not at all a quixotic outsider who represents the aspirations of an 'out' group, let alone a whole sex or gender. — Christopher Hitchens

Marxism in this country had even been an eccentric and quixotic passion. One oppressed class after another had seemed finally to miss the point. The have-nots, it turned out, aspired mainly to having. The minorities seemed to promise more, but finally disappointed: it developed that they actually cared about the issues, that they tended to see the integration of the luncheonette and the seat in the front of the bus as real goals, and only rarely as ploys, counters in a larger game. They resisted that essential inductive leap from the immediate reform to the social ideal, and, just as disappointingly, they failed to perceive their common cause with other minorities, continued to exhibit a self-interest disconcerting in the extreme to organizers steeped in the rhetoric of "brotherhood."
And then, at that exact dispirited moment when there seemed no one at all willing to play the proletariat, along came the women's movement. — Joan Didion

We are animals and we are made in this way and this is how we behave. I'm just kind of fascinated by how we can deny that we are animals and what our impact on the other animals is like, and how quixotic we can be in trying to assess what we've done in trying to correct it. — T.C. Boyle

The idea of defending, as integral parts of our Empire, countries 10,000 miles off, like Australia, which neither pay a shilling to our revenue ... nor afford us any exclusive trade ... is about as quixotic a specimen of national folly as was ever exhibited. — Richard Cobden

The world rarely shrieks its meaning at you. It whispers, in private languages and obscure modalities, in arcane and quixotic imagery, through symbol systems in which every element has multiple meanings determined by juxtaposition. — Gregory Maguire

Modern man's capacity for destruction is quixotic evidence of humanity's capacity for reconstruction. The powerful technological agents we have unleashed against the environment include many of the agents we require for its reconstruction. — George Will

My resting pulse as a writer is writing idealistically and romantically; aspirationally. My taste lies in quixotic heroes. — Aaron Sorkin

I'm just trying to do my part to save the world. — J. Cornell Michel

Ewan felt a searing stab of guilt. He'd taken an exquisite, laughing young woman away from the London ballrooms that were her natural milieu and reduced her to a tearful, freezing damsel in distress. What's more, he'd taken her virginity, and given her only potatoes to eat. And for what? Due to a quixotic idea that he would alleviate her fear of poverty?
No. Annabel had accused him of not being honest with himself. The truth of it was that he'd sent his carriages away out of pure, unadulterated lust, no matter how much he would like to dress it up in fancy ideas. — Eloisa James

I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights. — Raymond Chandler

All male friendships are essentially quixotic: they last only so long as each man is willing to polish the shaving-bowl helmet, climb on his donkey, and ride off after the other in pursuit of illusive glory and questionable adventure. — Michael Chabon

Stirner's political praxis is quixotic. It accepts the established hierarchies of constraint as given ... Not liable to any radical change, they constitute part of the theatre housing the individual's action ... The egoist uses the elements of the social structure as props in his self-expressive act. — John Carroll

All stories come to an end. That moment when we sigh and close the book, perhaps sit back in our chair and rest our palm over the cover, is met with quixotic emotions. On the one hand, we're satisfied if the author successfully tied up loose ends, turned a memorable phrase and rewarded the hero's moral choice with his heart's desire. Yet we're also saddened that the adventure is over. Sometimes when we see that we only have a few pages left we slow down, savoring each word, staving off the — Mary Alice Monroe

He believed in himself, believed in his quixotic ambition, letting the failures of the previous day disappear as each new day dawned. Yesterday was not today. The past did not predict the future if he could learn from his mistakes. — Daniel Wallace

The English, although partakers in the most variable and quixotic climate in the world, never become used to its vagaries, but comment upon them with shock and resentment as if all their lives had been spent in the predictable monsoon. — Ruth Rendell

The war against death, dear Harry, is always a beautiful, noble, and wonderful, and glorious thing, and so, it follows, is the war against war. But it is always hopeless and quixotic too. — Hermann Hesse

By the time that the war came to an end, British society was generally inclined to reject the idealistic case for imperialism (that it would extend the benefits of advanced civilization to a backward region) as quixotic, and the practical case for it (that it would be of benefit to Britain to expand her empire) as untrue. — David Fromkin

The universe seeks equilibriums; it prefers to disperse energy, disrupt organization, and maximize chaos. Life is designed to combat these forces. We slow down reactions, concentrate matter, and organize chemicals into compartments; we sort laundry on Wednesdays. "It sometimes seems as if curbing entropy is our quixotic purpose in the universe," James Gleick wrote. We live in the loopholes of natural laws, seeking extensions, exceptions and excuses. The laws of nature still mark the outer boundaries of permissibility - but life, in all its idiosyncratic, mad weirdness, flourishes by reading between the lines. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

He had a sudden twinge of conscience concerning his responsibilities at the seaside villa, but dismissed it as quixotic. What he was doing was harming no one, and the blessing and peace of it all was so great a boon. He had tried cutting it off drastically once, and the result had been an explosion of emotion he had no mind to precipitate again. What earthly need was there to give up his dream-woman who harmed nobody and helped him so tremendously? — Dion Fortune

The single sculler, alone on the river at dawn, or spotlighted in his lane during a race, is th emost romantic, the most quixotic figure in all rowing. — Barry S. Strauss

Dare to change the world
There is nothing quixotic or romantic in wanting to change the world. It is possible. It is the age-old vocation of all humanity. I can't think of a better life than one dedicated to passion, to dreams, to the stubborness that defies chaos and disillusionment. — Gioconda Belli

Your father had other plans for you. Alas, his breakdown and untimely demise derailed everything he'd worked to accomplish. He would not approve of your quixotic pursuit of Imogene. She became embroiled in his vendetta with the forces of darkness, as it were. No sense following her into oblivion."
Conrad said, "You talk a lot for a guy on oxygen. — Laird Barron

There is nothing quixotic or romantic in wanting to change the world. It is possible. It is the age-old vocation of all humanity. — Gioconda Belli

I should mention that all of the above explorers were unqualified failures. Not coincidentally, they were also all British. Americans admire success. Englishman admire heroic failure. Given a choice
at least in my reading
I'm un-American enough to take quixotry over efficiency any day. — Anne Fadiman

Yet for quixotic reasons
namely, that I enjoyed writing obits
I had decided to scale back on articles about city life in order to write exclusively about the city's dead. For even less money. It was a strange and inexplicable career move. — Avi Steinberg