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Knight-errant   /naɪt-ˈɛrənt/   Listen
Knight-errant

noun
1.
A wandering knight travelling in search of adventure.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Knight-errant" Quotes from Famous Books



... with an expression of scorn, but the girl's face was pale and apprehensive. At first they failed to recognise me in my workman's disguise, but after a second or two the elder lady exclaimed, "Why surely it is M. de Lalande, our cavalier, the knight-errant who goes about rescuing distressed dames. But why this mummery, my trusty knight? What does ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... Carnival 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 ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... 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 ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... refuge at the court of King Scoriath. King Scoriath had a daughter, who was beautiful; and Maen, of course, acted as a knight was bound to do under such circumstances, and fell desperately in love with the princess. The Lady Moriath's beauty had bewildered more heads than that of the knight-errant; but the Lady Moriath's father and mother were determined ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... 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

... 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

... help laughing at the idea of my tall, awkward master, a knight-errant to this queen of ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... 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

... at the role of knight-errant which she seemed to discern in him, but he talked earnestly of her future, and once or twice, soothed by his voice, she dozed—but he didn't know it. Indeed, he told himself afterward that her silences showed how his ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... unarmed and without police escort in Tulla and Athenry was as great as ever was displayed by a knight-errant of old. The Nationalist papers, no longer able to taunt him with cowardice, took to declaring him to be a person notorious ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... him closely. Across the field of imagination there passed the figure of one who "went away sorrowful, having great possessions," and his heart—the heart of a child or a knight-errant—burned within him. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... confess this interest, but it prompted him secretly so that he was often reminding himself of the old days when Lois had been his daily companion and their mutual confidences had been their mutual pleasure. Just as a knight-errant of the old time might set out to seek his mistress, so did Alban go to Warsaw determined to succeed. He would find Lois in this whirling wonderland of delight, and, finding her, would ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... 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 ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... like the bold knight-errant, From his castle who would roam, Trusting her, my faithful steward, For a strict account of home; And each day I toil, and hazard All that any man may dare, For a resting-place at even, And the love that ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... who on that one and only occasion had paraded her intimacy with Delafield, thenceforward said not a word of him, and Warkworth's jealousy had died for lack of fuel. In relation to Julie, Delafield had been surely the mere shadow and agent of his little cousin the Duchess—a friendly, knight-errant sort of person, with a liking for the distressed. What! the heir-presumptive of Chudleigh Abbey, and one of the most famous of English dukedoms, when even he, the struggling, penurious officer, would never have dreamed of ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... tangle of gold and crimson reflected brokenly in the lake where frogs made merry, the frogs being about the only wild animals left in the Stromovka. Things were very different in this park when it was known as the Thiergarten, Hortus Ferarum, as long ago as the days of King John, the knight-errant ruler of Bohemia. It appears that bison, "aurochs," were kept here, and it is recorded that the sole surviving specimen died in 1566, which fact Archduke Ferdinand, the Kaiser's lieutenant, reported to Emperor Maximilian; he was thereupon ordered to ask the ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... who seems to regard the good of others. He, in civil life, whose thoughts turn upon schemes which may be of general benefit, without further reflection, is called a projector; and the man whose mind seems intent upon glorious achievements, a knight-errant. The ridicule among us runs strong against laudable actions; nay, in the ordinary course of things, and the common regards of life, negligence of the public is an epidemic vice. The brewer in his excise, the merchant in his customs, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... navy, Columbus, 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

... 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 to spinal disease or premature ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... Sir Knight-errant," quoth Sancho to his master, "be sure you don't forget what you promised me about the island; for I dare say I shall make shift to govern it, let it be ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... up, and after various accidents comes to the second resting-place, the Palace Beautiful, built by the Lord of the Hill to entertain strangers in. The recollections of Sir Bevis of Southampton furnished Bunyan with his framework. Lions guard the court. Fair ladies entertain him as if he had been a knight-errant in quest of the Holy Grail. The ladies, of course, are all that they ought to be: the Christian graces—Discretion, Prudence, Piety, and Charity. He tells them his history. They ask him if he has brought none of his old belongings with him. He answers yes; but greatly against his will: his inward ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... England gains the pass the while, And struggles through the 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? O, Douglas, for thy leading wand! Fierce Randolph, for thy speed! O 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 ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... 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 ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... 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 ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... 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 ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... All up the stairs their blasphemies did 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, ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler

... up in a roar fit to split the air as the hero of the day was recognized. And the Dalesmen gave a pace forward spontaneously as the gray knight-errant stole across ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... vizor^, casquetel^, siege cap, headpiece, casque, pickelhaube, vambrace^, 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^. bulletproof window. hardened site. V. defend, forfend, fend; shield, screen, shroud; engarrison^; fend round &c (circumscribe) 229; fence, entrench, intrench^; guard &c (keep safe) 664; guard against; take care of &c (vigilance) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... still retained some affection for his old favourite, Bess Lion, who being taken up for some of her tricks, was committed to St. Giles's Round-house. Shepherd going to see her there, broke the doors open, beat the keeper, and like a true knight-errant, set his distressed paramour at liberty. This heroic act got him so much reputation amongst the fair ladies in Drury Lane that there was nobody of his profession so much esteemed by them as John Shepherd, with his brother Thomas, who had taken ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... born three or four centuries ago I could have been a knight-errant or a troubadour. But alas! in these days the knight-errants go to the Stock Exchange and the troubadours write for the newspapers. I am not fitted to wrestle with the wild beasts of the money market; I would rather go to ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... full face of the sun, she should have taken a memory of valiant deeds, kind words, and a protecting arm, and have created out of these a man after her own heart, endowing him with all heroic attributes; at one and the same time sending him out into the world, a knight-errant without fear and without reproach, and keeping him by her side—the side of a child—in her own private wonderland. He saw that she had done this, and he was ashamed. He did not tell her that that eleven-years-distant fortnight was to him but a half-remembered incident of a crowded life, and ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... Brock felt stiff and sore, and 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 ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... 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 ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... for a knight-errant in the Spain of to-day, ruling by steel and shot and flame and gold? It must be rather awful, the listener reflected, to see your own country go rotten like that in a generation. Yet there was no bitterness ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... I need a protector in my various rambles, and you shall be my esquire when I go forth in state to see my flower subjects scattered all over the farm. My knight-errant, too, to espouse my cause should snake, or dog, or an enraged animal of the pastures seek to ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey

... 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

... 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

... 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 ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... fate and choice, something more than he had meant to be. The mathematician, we might almost say the calculating boy, was already gambling in the highest lottery which led to the highest and most historic loss. The engineer devoted to discipline was already a free lance, because already a knight-errant. ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton

... 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. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... youth, striving like a knight-errant for the love of a lady and the glory of conquest, but he was also a born fighter, and in every emergency he had shown himself as able ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... Herbert never published these memoirs, and seems to have written them as much as anything else for his own private satisfaction. It may be doubted whether there is any more astounding monument of coxcombry in literature. Herbert is sometimes cited as a model of a modern knight-errant, of an Amadis born too late. Certainly, according to his own account, all women loved and all men feared him; but for the former fact we have nothing but his own authority, and in regard to the latter we have counter evidence which renders ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... which he was soon overwhelmed. The professor's triumph was, however, but short-lived, for the simple-minded congregation, who loved their teacher, were enraged that he should be thus confounded. Without more ado, therefore, they laid violent hands upon the Quixotic knight-errant of the Church, and so cudgelled and belabored him bodily that he might perhaps have lost his life in the encounter had he not been protected by the more respectable portion of the assembly. These persons, highly disapproving the whole ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... great way in a romance he has begun, about a knight-errant in search of a father. The king says there are many such about his court; but I never saw them nor heard of them before. The Marchioness de la Motte, his relative, brought it to me, written out in a charming hand, as much as the copy-book ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... you see me without bruise or scratch. Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, 'spoiling a ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... of the letter Captain O'Toole gathers his friends, borrows a horse here, a carriage there, and a hundred guineas from Heaven knows whom, comes to the rescue like a knight-errant, and retells the old story of how ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... interposing, "I am happy to introduce to you as Mr. Chillingly, not only the son of an old friend of mine, not only the knight-errant of whose gallant conduct on behalf of your protegee Jessie Wiles we have heard so much, but the eloquent arguer who has conquered my better judgment in a matter on which I thought myself infallible. Tell Mr. Lethbridge that I accept Will Somers as a tenant ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... "saints,"—exultations over the destruction of the "sinners,"—mingle with the beautiful and soothing promises of the prophets. There are indeed occasionally to be found among the believers men of refined and exalted spiritualism, who in their lives and conversation remind one of Tennyson's Christian knight-errant in his yearning towards the hope ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... mind—his own mind, a part of 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? He is what he wants to be, a man—in the striking expression which he chose as a title for ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... 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 ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... after his death, by a less profound but more popular and brilliant man, and, like him, a monk. This was the celebrated Peter Abelard, born in the year 1079, in Brittany, of noble parents, and a boy of remarkable precocity. He was a sort of knight-errant of philosophy, going from convent to convent and from school to school, disputing, while a mere youth, with learned teachers, wherever he could find them. Having vanquished the masters in the provincial ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... damsel, that is a matter which will have to be left to your invention, or the kindness of such as you. I am here on a hare-brained errand, playing knight-errant in a way that shocks my common sense. But since the matter has gone so far I will see it through, or die in the attempt. Your bully lord shall either give me Heru, stock, lock, and block, or hang me from a yard-arm. But I would rather have the lady. Come, you will ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... 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 ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... knight-errant. When he said that a thing wanted doing, his heart ached until he could do it. A Celtic strain of blood in him showed itself in the heat of his belief, the impetuosity of his actions. In Ethel this strain had taken an artistic turn; but the same nature that urged her to ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... is in other men;" and among the many attempts at imitation, to which the admirable original has given rise, Sir Launcelot Greaves is not one of the worst. That a young man, whose brain had been slightly affected by a disappointment in love, should turn knight-errant, at a time when books of chivalry were no longer in vogue, is not, indeed, in the first instance, very probable. But we are contented to overlook this defect in favour of the many original touches of character, and striking views of life, particularly in the mad-house, and ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... 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 ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... flourishing condition of his trade. The asses of Africa are finer than those in the north; but this is fine for an African. One fellow mounts upon it, and sets off with the world before him, like a knight-errant, seeking an adventure, the rabble at his tail acting as squire. He begins the circuit of the Forum, and picks up its riff-raff as he goes along—here some rascal boys, there some drunken women, here again a number of half-brutalized country slaves and peasants. Partly out of ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... ingenuity to find out if we have ever met. Before appearing before them, I inquire if they are fashionable people, spent last winter in Paris, &c.? I am told Don Quixote is almost a savage; he travels all the time so as to sustain his character as knight-errant, and that he spent last winter in Rome.... This quieted my fears ... I did not appear in society until last winter, so Don Quixote never saw me; knowing we could meet without the possibility of recognition, I ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... rejoicing cruelty as only boys or uncivilised men can feel. The little girl was sobbing, half in distress, and half because of the haste she had made, and Master Richard's juvenile soul burnt within him at the sight like that of a knight-errant. He had read a great deal about knights-errant for the time which had been as yet allowed him for the pursuit of literature, and he was by nature a boy of much fire and gentleness, and a very sympathetic imagination. So the big heart in the small body swelled with ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... 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 practice himself all that he had read of as being the usual practices of knights-errant; righting every kind of wrong, and exposing himself to peril and danger from which, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... said laughingly, "the next time I play the knight-errant, may God send me a less observant damsel. There's nothing to forgive. The plain truth is that I was frightened, a little bit. But I'm new to this sort of thing, and I hope to improve." Then, after a pause, I met her eyes full with mine and added, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... are a wonderful people. You seek adventures with as much gusto as a knight-errant of the olden times. If I had a dozen such as you two under my charge, I'd soon free this ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... the Colonel, 'there has been no malice prepense, as lawyers, I think, term it, in this rash step of yours; and you have been trepanned into the service of this Italian knight-errant by a few civil speeches from him, and one or two of his Highland recruiting sergeants? It is sadly foolish, to be sure, but not nearly so bad as I was led to expect. However, you cannot desert, even from the Pretender, at the present ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... 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

... 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 ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... would have fought Edward until he had been joined by Margaret; and he must have known that her non-arrival was owing to contrary winds, he having been himself a naval commander. But he acted like a knight-errant, not like a general, gave battle, and was defeated and slain, "The Last of the Barons." Having triumphed at Barnet, Edward marched to meet Margaret's army, which was led by Somerset, and defeated it on the 4th of May, after a hardly-contested ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... gentleman of La Mancha, about 50 years of age, gentle, and dignified, learned and high-minded; with strong imagination perverted by romance, and crazed with ideas of chivalry. He is the hero of a Spanish romance by Cervantes. Don Quixote feels himself called on to become a knight-errant to defend the oppressed, and succor the injured. He engages for his squire Sancho Panza, a middle-aged, ignorant rustic, selfish, but full of good sense, a gourmand, attached to his master, shrewd and credulous. The knight goes forth on his adventures, thinks wind-mills to be ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... the surge, and the surge to the cloudland; Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone. Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles, ??de? ya???, Joyous knight-errant of God, thirsting for labour and strife; No more on magical steed borne free through the regions of ether, But, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew for gold. Fruit-bearing autumn is gone; let the sad quiet winter hang o'er me— What were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley

... across stream. For Balder, having charged his imagination with castles, warlike chieftains, and beautiful princesses, had finally arrived at the conclusion that the stone house was an enchanter's castle; the figure he had seen, an imprisoned lady; himself, a knight-errant bound to rescue her and give the wicked enchanter his deserts. This idea possessed his brain for the moment more vividly than do realities most men. The plumed helmet was on his head, he glittered with shining arms and sword, his heart warmed ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... "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. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... 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 to inspect ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... already become 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 him extended to me: and, during my visits, the question ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... had attained the entrance, with the other seven following, when some 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

... spy, announced Duke Charles's intention of sending a fleet to prevent Warwick's invasion, and rated King Edward sharply for his supineness in not preparing suitably against so formidable a foe. The gay and reckless presumption of Edward, worthier of a knight-errant than a monarch, laughed at the word invasion. "Pest on Burgundy's ships! I only wish that the earl would land!" [Com, iii. c. 5] he said to his council. None echoed the wish! But later in the day came a third messenger with information that roused all Edward's ire; careless of each ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... 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

... 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 ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... still a knight-errant, and the princess was saying all manner of charming things to me in her still more charming manner, when I became aware that it was the voice of the evening before wishing me good-morning. I opened my eyes to see a golden gleam flooding the still-shut ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... hunger is one of the factors in man-building, and the scales soon began to fall from his eyes. Dignity is a good thing to stand on, but a poor thing to travel with, and Max soon found it the most cumbersome piece of luggage a knight-errant could carry. ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... 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 or to be conveniently short-sighted. Frank ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... the aristocracy. Those who municipalized themselves became more enlightened, more lettered, more refined, and, at the same time, less chivalrous and less martial than their ancestors. The characters of buccaneer, land-pirate, knight-errant could not be conveniently united with those of banker, exchange broker, dealer in dry goods, and general ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... with a basket on her arm, and again he 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

... a 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, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... the St. Lawrence planned for France a colonial empire to match that of her enemy.[23] De Leon discovered Florida, and died while seeking there to emulate the successes of Cortes. De Soto discovered the Mississippi[24] and he also perished, lured on in the same knight-errant search for another golden empire to conquer. Who, having read the lives of such adventurers as these, shall ridicule the wildest extravagance in all the romances of chivalry? Wonderland grew real around these men. They achieved impossibilities. The maddest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... 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 ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... private soldier at the age of seventeen, and who, by sheer force of energy, bravery and aptitude for his profession, had fought his way to military rank and honour. After seeing much service on the continent, and passing through as many adventures as a knight-errant of old, he was transferred to British North America. His gallant services in this country are imperfectly recorded in various accounts of the War of 1812, and in Tupper's "Life of Brock." Every Canadian is, or ought to be, familiar with the circumstances attending ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... Margaret to wait for her, and to wait patiently; and he meant to keep his promise. But there are some limits even to the patience of a lover, though he were the veriest knight-errant who was ever eager to shiver a lance or hack the edge of a battle-axe for love of his liege lady. When you have nothing to do but to walk up and down a few yards of hard dusty high-road, upon a bleak evening in January, an hour more or less is of considerable importance. Five o'clock struck about ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... Never had knight-errant been more true to his mistress. Her image had been his talisman as well against danger from without, as against the demon within. It had never left his mind, and he now returned for his reward. He had returned ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... where there were grown-up sons as well as daughters, without special permission from the lord of the castle; he authorised the visits of Mr Browning, the poet, being fondly assured that Mr Browning's intentions were not those of a burglar, or—worse—an amorous knight-errant. If any daughter of his conceived the possibility of transferring her prime love and loyalty from himself to another, she was even as Aholah and Aholibah who doted upon the Assyrians, captains, and rulers clothed ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... century the more purely intellectual side of mysticism comes out more strongly than the exstatic—so dominant in these societies of the fourteenth—and we have Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa, with Giordano Bruno, the martyred knight-errant of philosophy, and Paracelsus, the much slandered scientist, who drew his knowledge directly from the original eastern fountain, instead ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... that the more certain he became of the father's guilt, the more certain also he became of the daughter's merits. It was very hard. The whole thing was cruelly hard. It was cruelly hard upon him that he should be brought into this trouble, and be forced to take upon himself the armour of a knight-errant for the redress of the wrong on the part of the young lady. But when alone in his house, or with his child, he declared to himself that he would do so. It might well be that he could not live in Barsetshire after he had married Mr Crawley's ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... more tightly her knight-errant's hand, Anna sighed, and resigned herself for once to the unaccustomed pleasure of doing ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... tree: and that I love 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 room in my heart for such a love of lady ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... 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 with your ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... 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, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... the kind of place for a hermit," said Monica. "He could have had a little cell and told his beads without being disturbed by anybody, except an occasional knight-errant who would blow a horn from the opposite bank. I wonder ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... a great tournament: and the lord of the tower was in his castle and looked out at a window, and saw a damosel, a dwarf, and a knight armed at all points. So God me help, said the lord, with that knight will I joust, for I see that he is a knight-errant. And so he armed him and horsed him hastily. And when he was on horseback with his shield and his spear, it was all red, both his horse and his harness, and all that to him longeth. And when that he came nigh him he weened it had been his brother the Black Knight; and then he cried aloud, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... a separate objection, that the manners of the age and country are not adhered to. Sebastian, by disposition a crusading knight-errant, devoted to religion and chivalry, becomes, in the hands of Dryden, merely a gallant soldier and high-spirited prince, such as existed in the poet's own days. But, what is worse, the manners of Mahometans are ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... is to become of you. I was born for your service, my princess, and the service being rendered..." He shrugged and smiled, threw out his hands and let them fall again to his sides in an eloquent gesture. He was the complete courtier, the knight-errant, the ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... grownups have made, and make it over into another world altogether. Perhaps the child's eye and the child's heart, fresh from God, see and feel more clearly and more justly than we do. For this much is sure—Jeanette was right in keeping to the end the image of Colonel Martin Culpepper as a knight-errant, who needed only a bespangled steed, a little less avoirdupois, and a foolish cause to set him battling in the tourney. As it was, in this humdrum world, the colonel could do nothing more heroic than come rattling down Main Street ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... 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. Yet his mien ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... usage 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 ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... subsequent adventures at Condillac. He dwelt passingly upon the manner in which they had treated him, and found it difficult to choose words to express the reason for his returning in disguise to play the knight-errant to Valerie. He passed on to speak of last night's happenings and of his escape. Throughout, the Marquis heard him with a grave countenance and a sober, attentive glance, yet, when he had finished a smile ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... courageous, he was a true knight-errant, the "last Crusader whom the annals of chivalry were to know; the man who had humbled the crescent as it had not been humbled since the days of the Tancreds, the Baldwins, the Plantagenets." Endowed ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... well done indeed," the king said. "I would that I could ramble about and act the knight-errant as you do. 'Tis tiresome to be in the hands of councillors, who are ever impressing upon me that I must not do this or that, as if I were a child. I would gladly have you here about my person, but, as Sir Ralph has told me, you ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty



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