Definition of "Quixotic"

Don Quixote undertook to redress the bodily wrongs of the world, but the redressment of mental vagaries would be an enterprise more than Quixotic.

1822 July 19, Thomas Jefferson, “Correspondence”, in Thomas Jefferson Randolph, editor, Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Late President of the United States. Now First Published from the Original Manuscripts., volume IV, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], published 1829, page 362

When we see a man dramatically lamenting in a publication intended to be believed, that “The age of chivalry is gone;” that “the glory of Europe is extinguished forever!” that “the unbought grace of life (if any one knows what it is,) the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone!” And all this because the Quixotic age of chivalric nonsense is gone, what opinion can we form of his judgment, or what regard can we pay to his facts?

1830 , Thomas Paine, “Rights of Man. Being an Answer to Mr Burke’s Attack on the French Revolution. Part I”, in The Political Writings of Thomas Paine, Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs in the American Revolution. […], volume II, New York, N.Y.: […] Solomon King, […], page 55

But I never met with very warm support in carrying on this object, but was often exposed to some sarcastical insinuations or sardonic smiles from those who thought the attempt to ameliorate the condition of the Gipsies, only Quixotic.

1831, James Crabb, quoting I. Cobbin, “Further interesting Correspondence”, in The Gipsies’ Advocate; or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of the English Gipsies: To Which Are Added, Many Interesting Anecdotes, on the Success That Has Attended the Plans of Several Benevolent Individuals, Who Anxiously Desire Their Conversion to God, London: Seeley, […]; Westley and Davis, […]; Hatchard, […], page 153

The Queen-mother had a right to daily rations from the palace for her household. She complained once that her rations were not sent, whereupon she was told with Quixotic humour, that her servants might come and take their dues daily; for the King’s cupboards were all open—and all empty.

1869 January, “1. Mémoires de la Cour d’Espagne sous le Règne de Charles II, 1678–1682. […] 2. Lettres de Madame de Villars à Madame de Coulanges, (1679–1681). […]”, in The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal, volume CXXIX, number CCLXIII, London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer; Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, pages 6–7

That the whole conception is instinct with Quixotic humour need excite no surprise, when we consider that the mind which planned it was engaged at the very time in calling into being that unique character, the Governor of Barataria!

1883, James Y[oung] Gibson, “Translator’s Preface”, in Journey to Parnassus […] Translated into English Tercets with Preface and Illustrative Notes […], London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., […], page xli

He was one of the few, very few, translators that have shown any apprehension of the unsmiling gravity which is the essence of Quixotic humour; […]

1885, John Ormsby, “Introduction”, in The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha […] In Four Vols, volume I, London: Smith, Elder & Co. […], section “Prefatory”, page 6

This very sagacious Quixotic soul also remembers that about a million of years ago the placental mammals of Australia sprang from an undifferentiated prototype, which had been gradually developed into the kangaroo, but having arrived at this extreme point the transmutative energy of the race was exhausted by their long-continued metamorphoses; […]

1888, A[mericus] Featherman, “Preface”, in Social History of the Races of Mankind. Second Division: Oceano-Melanesians., London: Trübner & Co., […], pages xxx–xxxi

Like errants Quixotic, / Our armor, you see, we have on.

1889, Reginald DeKoven (music), Harry B[ache] Smith (libretto), Don Quixote, a Comic Opera, in Three Acts, Founded upon Cervantes’ Novel, Chicago, Ill.: Slason Thompson & Co., […], page 25

With more than Quixotic courage and boisterous energy, he not only arrays himself against every belief or institution which wears the aspect of stability or general acceptance, but he continually mistakes the phantasies of his own imagination for actual oppugnable realities.

1891 January 24, “Recent Theology”, in The Academy. A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art., volume XXXIX, number 977, London, section “Puritanism in Power. By Clement Wise. (Kegan Paul & Co.)”, page 87, column 3

Vane, you’re either a Quixotic fool, or a humbug—and I suspect you’re the latter.

1900, Mary Pacheco, The New Don Quixote, page 39

The cynic philosopher is portrayed as a sharp and humorous critic of mundane follies, and, as in the Quixotic romances, artistic effect is given to the view that perhaps it is the world that is mad, and not the philosopher.

1904, The Adventures of Don Sylvio de Rosalva, page xv

There was the school of simplicity, socialism, and universal love, the head of which was a Quixotic Diogenes called Mêh-tsz or Meccius (fifth century b.c.); […]

1905, Edward Harper Parker, “Confucianism”, in China and Religion, New York, N.Y.: E[dward] P[ayson] Dutton and Company, page 67

I remember once when lecturing in Sweden I happened to call the Swedish people “Quixotic,” because they had made such wonderful sacrifices in the cause of their country’s art, and after the lecture one man catechized me severely for having used the word “Quixotic” in connection with the Swedish people, for, he said, “Quixotic meant ridiculous.” In interpreting the word in this sense he was following all the little scholars, barbers, and canons, who are mounting guard night and day over our Knight.

1928, The Problem of Evil—: Three Public Lectures Delivered in the Physics Amphitheatre of the Rice Institute, page 94

This vision is the great power of the free Quixotic soul.

1942, Manuel Komroff, Don Quixote and Sancho: A Play in 13 Scenes, pages 11–12

Torrenueva was what I hoped to find at this time, an isolated Manchegan village with a life of its own, untouched by tourism or Quixotic associations.

1959, Rupert Croft-Cooke, The Quest for Quixote, page 121

The dinner served at the inn had a most Quixotic flavor. Bean soup, Oeufs Maritornes, shoestring potatoes and the hard and tasty cheese of La Mancha.

1963, Homer D. Crotty, Glimpses of Don Quixote & La Mancha, page 22

It is thanks to the Quixotic spirit of Columbus that America was discovered; and thanks to the Quixotic spirit of Cortés, Pizarro, Quesada, and the rest, that it became European.

1963, Thomas Hinde [pen name; Thomas Willes Chitty], compiler, Spain: A Personal Anthology, page 106

You don’t have to be an ace guerrilla fighter to see that this Quixotic expedition is going to come to a sticky end.

1968, The Twentieth Century, page 46

Do we not know very well, for example, that the earnest Quixotic stock response that explains our culture’s chronic militarism as a mere function of its devotion to peaceful living is a façade?

1971, Arthur Efron, Don Quixote and the Dulcineated World, page 141

And there exists a Quixotic philosophy and even a Quixotic metaphysics, and also a Quixotic logic and a Quixotic sense of religion. This philosophy, this logic, this ethics, this religious sense is what I have tried to outline, to suggest rather than to develop, in the present work; not to develop rationally, of course, for Quixotic madness does not admit of scientific logic. […] And shall not we, his fond admirers, also travel alone as we forge a Quixotic Spain from out of our imagination?

1972, Miguel de Unamuno, translated by Anthony Kerrigan, Selected Works of Miguel de Unamuno: The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations, pages 321 and 352

Uncritical reading and inappropriate intellectual endeavor were frequently satirized in the form of a naive or Quixotic lady.

1980, The Durham University Journal, page 234

Some of the categorizations about the Quixotic and Hamletic character traits which Turgenev cites in his essay are already apparent in his "Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District."

1980, Walter Smyrniw, Turgenev’s Early Works: From Character Sketches to a Novel, page 119

Insarov's and Elena's idealism is not unnaturally coloured with Quixotic elements which the realists of the sixties themselves would have disowned.

1980, Robert Dessaix, Turgenev, the Quest for Faith, page 63

Once Bazarov has awakened to an awareness of his individuality, he begins to question his worth as a unique person, to contemplate his insignificance in the face of eternity, and to doubt the meaning of his actions—that is, he begins the transformation from a Quixotic to a Hamlet-type that has been described in critical literature.

1983, American Contributions to the Ninth International Congress of Slavists, page 116

Freeborn writes that Bazarov is Turgenev’s attempt at a Quixotic character and that Bazarov’s death shows Turgenev’s inability to reconcile Hamlet and Don Quixote.

1983, David Allan Lowe, Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, page 61

In Tristram’s attempts to impose his imaginative will upon the intractable realities of subject matter, time, language, and the reader’s mind, we have a paradigm for the Quixotic endeavors of any writer. And if writing is an inherently Quixotic process, so is reading.

1985, Essays in Literature, page 59

There has been a continuous succession of Quixotic figures ready to “redress all manner of grievances” in all walks of Ukrainian national life to the present day, including political and military leaders […]

1986, Studia Ucrainica, page 59

His mission gone, Chaliapin forfeits his existence as well, singing his grief as he expires during the lengthy, expressionistic bookburning scene, the beauty of the flames and the slowly transfigured volumes signifying the death of chivalry, the passing of the Quixotic age.

1986, The Motion Picture Guide, page 688

Here we encounter a portrait of The Rebel as Quixotic idealist. Before his death, Orwell’s acquaintances had often remarked on his ascetic temper, eccentric habits, deep nostalgia, and raw-boned, even cadaverous frame.

1989, John Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of ‘St. George’ Orwell, page 122

The notable influence of Don Quixote on the American novel is perhaps explained by the fact that certain well-known American myths are easily adaptable to a Quixotic mould.

1990, Anthony J. Close, Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote (Landmarks of World Literature), Cambridge University Press, page 118

Tat’iana in many ways is a Quixote figure, but her Quixotic faith ultimately causes her to accept the conventions of marriage and society, and not reject them as does Don Quixote.

1993, Dissertation Abstracts International, page 548

DON QUIXOTE DE LA JOLLA is, then, a headlong, hectic, hilarious rush, a frantic comic phantasmagoria on Quixotic themes, that needs no scholar annotations; it is great good fun.

1993, Eric Overmyer, Don Quixote de la Jolla

Taken together, the Quixotic utterances expose the mind’s nonrational activity.

1995, Paul Ilie, The Age of Minerva, page 189

We cannot know the object of Don Quixote’s quest unless we ourselves are Quixotic (note the capital Q).

2004, Harold Bloom, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, page 98

In an essay published decades ago, Carlos Blanco Aguinaga posits what he determines to be a radical contrast in point of view, and, in a major comparative study of narrative, Walter Reed addresses “the Quixotic versus the picaresque,” and the list goes on.

2005, Edward H. Friedman, ““El pobre servicio de mano”: Lazarillo de Tormes, Don Quixote, and the Design of the Novel”, in John P. Gabriele, editor, 1605-2005, Don Quixote Across the Centuries, page 29

Whereas the eighteenth-century novels of evidently Quixotic derivation came mainly from England, France and Germany, and moreover, were predominantly comic, the range in the nineteenth century extends to Russia, North America, Spain and beyond, and acquires a much more grandiose, sombre and occasionally tragic character.

2008, Anthony J. Close, A Companion to Don Quixote, page 241

If Quixote (Quixotic reading or the enthralled imagination) is one name for the force of myth, the Quixote deploys that dynamic in order to critique and collapse it.

2009, The Western Humanities Review, page 23

Are Pax Romana, Pax Hispanica, and Pax Americana aspects of the same Quixotic venture and the “impossible dream?”

2011, Eliezer Oyola, The Death of Don Quixote: The Last Technological Extension: Culture, Identity, Coexistence and the Literary Imagination, page 11