quixotic

The man made a sweeping, quixotic bow, nearly falling from the horse.

Michael Shaara -- The Killer Angels

It is rather Quixotic of you.

Oscar Wilde -- The Importance of Being Earnest

...his first step as police chief was as seemingly quixotic as Gunn’s. With felonies — serious crimes — on the subway system at an all-time high, Bratton decided to crack down on farebeating. Why? Because he believed that, like graffiti, farebeating could be a signal, a small expression of disorder that invited much more serious crimes.

Malcolm Gladwell -- The Tipping Point

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 -- Go Set a Watchman

Quickly then she outlined to Sophie her scheme about Lebensborn, trying to make her see that the plan—however quixotic it might appear—was perhaps the only way of assuring Jan’s deliverance from the camp.

William Styron -- Sophie’s Choice

I felt a certain diffidence about asking, but I really wanted to know what lay behind that quixotic gesture.

Diana Gabaldon -- Outlander

Show more again

This was not a good time to be asking banks for money for what they deemed a project of quixotic dimensions.

Dave Eggers -- A Hologram for the King

Well, my quixotic one, you shall tell me anything—say, as soon as we are settled in our lodging; not now.

Thomas Hardy -- Tess of the d’Urbervilles

But it is always hopeless and quixotic too.

Hermann Hesse -- Steppenwolf

In other words, a lot of the audience would view what Socios was doing in Carabayllo as quixotic, even heretical.

Tracy Kidder -- Mountains Beyond Mountains

I realized that I had not been objective in my quixotic fight to save the clubs.

Richard Wright -- Black Boy

The annals of this Ninth Crusade are yet to be written,—the tale of a mission that seemed to our age far more quixotic than the quest of St. Louis seemed to his.

W. E. B. Du Bois -- The Souls of Black Folk

As a form of protest, they did not have a high success rate and the rationale behind them always struck me as quixotic.

Nelson Mandela -- Long Walk to Freedom

He saw a future of quixotic attempts to inculcate his views in the boy, views opposed in every way to the mother’s.

Milan Kundera -- The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Several years later, as I was about to go overseas as a soldier, I spent my last week-end pass on a somewhat quixotic journey to Clyde, Ohio, the town upon which Winesburg was partly modeled.

Sherwood Anderson -- Winesburg, Ohio

It was quite on a par with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred million years the coal seam of the sister island would be played out and if, as time went on, that turned out to be how the cat jumped all he could personally say on the matter was that as a host of contingencies, equally relevant to the issue, might occur ere then it was highly advisable in the interim to try to make the most of both countries even though poles apart.

James Joyce -- Ulysses

You must not give up all that for a quixotic life in a wilderness.

Zane Grey -- The Light of Western Stars

On the other hand, if he did attempt anything so quixotic, I should not be compelled to accompany him.

Jules Verne -- A Journey to the Center of the Earth

By the time he finished his quixotic track career, Michael Oher would break the West Tennessee sectional record in the discus, and threaten it in the shot put.

Michael Lewis -- The Blind Side

At first light, December 15, Adams, his sons, Francis Dana, John Thaxter, servants, Spanish guides and muleteers, and two additional Americans who had been aboard the Sensible, set off mounted on scrawny mules and looking, as John Thaxter noted, very like a scene from Don Quixote, and quixotic the whole undertaking turned out to be.

David McCullough -- John Adams

"Well, you are always heroic and transcendental," said Mr. Shelby, "but I think you had better think before you undertake such a piece of Quixotism."

Harriet Beecher Stowe -- Uncle Tom’s Cabin

"But in one sense, Hillary’s path was far easier than Mortenson’s quixotic quest.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

’Very good,’ replied Mr. Brownlow, smiling; ’but no doubt they will bring that about for themselves in the fulness of time, and if we step in to forestall them, it seems to me that we shall be performing a very Quixotic act, in direct opposition to our own interest—or at least to Oliver’s, which is the same thing.’

Charles Dickens -- Oliver Twist

Lydgate did not stay to think that she was Quixotic: he gave himself up, for the first time in his life, to the exquisite sense of leaning entirely on a generous sympathy, without any check of proud reserve.

George Eliot -- Middlemarch

And you and your sister were head and ears deep in some Quixotic scheme.

E.M. Forster -- Howards End

Walsh’s career to that point had been as quixotic as his view of the football offense.

Michael Lewis -- The Blind Side

She is ready prey to any man who knows how to play adroitly either on her affectionate ardor or her Quixotic enthusiasm; and a man stands by with that very intention in his mind—a man with no other principle than transient caprice, and who has a personal animosity towards me—I am sure of it—an animosity which is fed by the consciousness of his ingratitude, and which he has constantly vented in ridicule of which I am as well assured as if I had heard it.

George Eliot -- Middlemarch

It may have been Quixotic, but it was magnificent.

Barrie, James Matthew -- The Adventures of Peter Pan

Well, my quixotic one, you shall tell me anything—say, as soon as we are settled in our lodging; not now.

Hardy, Thomas -- Tess of the d’Urbervilles - A Pure Woman

To me your uncle seems merely quixotic and egregiously selfish.

Oppenheim, E. Phillips -- The Vanished Messenger

But he was not quixotic.

Conrad, Joseph -- The Secret Agent

I only think you’re too quixotic.

Wodehouse, Pelham Grenville -- The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

The pilgrims read "Nomadic Life" and keep themselves in a constant state of Quixotic heroism.

Twain, Mark -- The Innocents Abroad

This family training, too, combined with their turn for combativeness, makes them eminently quixotic.

Hughes, Thomas -- Tom Brown’s Schooldays

The voice went on: "Olivier, as you know, was quixotic, and would not permit a secret service and spies."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. -- The Innocence Of Father Brown

Oh, that’s dead right, and I’m the last man to ask you to take Quixotic risks.

Hornung, E. W. -- Raffles, Further Adventures Of The Amateur Cracksman