Tilt At Windmills Quotes

Miles had sworn his officer's oath to the Emperor less than two weeks ago, puffed with pride at his achievement. In his secret mind he had imagined himself keeping that oath through blazing battle, enemy torture, what-have-you, even while sharing cynical cracks afterwards with Ivan about archaic dress swords and the sort of people who insisted on wearing them. But in the dark of subtler temptations, those that hurt without heroism for consolation, he foresaw, the Emperor would no longer be the symbol of Barrayar in his heart. Peace to you, small lady, he thought to Raina. You've won a twisted poor modern knight, to wear your favor on his sleeve. But it's a twisted poor world we were both born into, that rejects us without mercy and ejects us without consultation. At least I won't just tilt at windmills for you. I'll send in sappers to mine the twirling suckers, and blast them into the sky.... He knew who he served now. And why he could not quit. And why he must not fail.

You cannot change the world with ideas. People with few ideas are less likely to make mistakes; they follow what everyone else does and are no trouble to anyone; they're successful, make money, find good jobs, enter politics, receive honours; they become famous writers, academics, journalists. Can anyone who is so good at looking after their own interests really be stupid? I'm the stupid one, the one who wanted to go tilting at windmills.

Why would anyone who is deeply satisfied with reality, with real life as it is lived, dedicate himself to something as insubstantial and fanciful as the creation of fictional realities? Naturally, those who rebel against lie as it is, using their ability to invent different lives and different people, may do so for any number of reasons, honorable or dishonorable, generous or selfish, complex or banal. The nature of this basic questioning of reality, which to my mind lies at the heart of every literary calling, doesn't matter at all. What matters is that the rejection be strong enough to fuel the enthusiasm for a task as quixotic as tilting at windmills – the slight-of-hand replacement of the concrete, objective world of life as it is lived with the subtle and ephemeral world of fiction.

God is not an alternative to science as an explanation, he is not to be understood merely as a God of the gaps, he is the ground of all explanation: it is his existence which gives rise to the very possibility of explanation, scientific or otherwise. It is important to stress this because influential authors such as Richard Dawkins will insist on conceiving of God as an explanatory alternative to science – an idea that is nowhere to be found in theological reflection of any depth. Dawkins is therefore tilting at a windmill - dismissing a concept of God that no serious thinker believes in anyway. Such activity is not necessarily to be regarded as a mark of intellectual sophistication.

If you can see something, and it is wrong, you can fight it with a reasonable chance of success. Fighting the nonexistent is worse than pointless: Don Quixote tilted at windmills, but at least windmills are real.

The word 'free-lance', I used to think, had a romantic ring; but sadly discovered, when I tried to be one, that its practice has little freedom, and the lance is a sorry weapon to tilt at literary windmills.

In 1568 the Dutch, who were mainly Protestant, revolted against their Catholic Spanish overlord. At first the rebels seemed to play the role of Don Quixote, courageously tilting at invincible windmills. Yet within eighty years the Dutch had not only secured their independence from Spain, but had managed to replace the Spaniards and their Portuguese allies as masters of the ocean highways, build a global Dutch empire, and become the richest state in Europe. The secret of Dutch success was credit. The Dutch burghers, who had little taste for combat on land, hired mercenary armies to fight the Spanish for them. The Dutch themselves meanwhile

Lieutenant Tindall told me I'd find you up here tilting at putrid windmills. Now I know what he meant.

Ivanov: You only qualified last year, my dear friend, you're still young and confident, but I am thirty-five. I have the right to give you some advice. Don't marry a Jew or a psychopath or a bluestocking but choose yourself someone ordinary, someone a shade of grey, with no bright colour and no superfluous noises. In general, construct your whole life on a conventional pattern. The greyer, the more monotonous the background, the better. My dear fellow, don't do battle against thousands all on your own, don't tilt against windmills, don't beat your head against walls... And may God preserve you from all kinds of rational farming, newfangled schools, fiery speeches... Shut yourself in your shell and do your little God-given business... It's snugger, healthier and more honest.

I am beginning to understand why I came here today. I needed to escape the cluttered struggles of everyday life, the battles born of a false sense of consequence. I spend so much time waving a sword in the air; I am exhausted and want to lay my weapon down. Like Don Quixote, I have been tilting at windmills. - Essay: Walden, Revisited

The windmill you are tilting at is very high and ancient and English: privilege.

There is a persistent belief amongst abled people that a cure is what disabled people should want. To abandon our disabled selves and bodies and assimilate into a perhaps unachievable abled skin. Pushback to this idea often comes in the form of the social model of disability, which states that we are disabled by society and lack of access rather than by our bodies. For many, the social model can be liberating: by locating the cause of our problems outside our bodies, we can begin to love ourselves again. Tackling systemic ableism may feel like tilting at windmills, but it is still easier to address than some kind of failing within ourselves. There is a criticism of the social model of disability, located in the idea that some disabled people may want a cure. Particularly with matters like chronic pain/chronic illness, a cure is seen as something that can itself be liberating: a way to simply be in one’s body without feeling pain, for example. There is a danger in the cure mentality, as it can be a slippery slope toward eugenics when it is applied by abled people. Many in the Deaf and autistic communities do not want a cure and feel that those who advocate for a cure are advocating that they not exist anymore. Sometimes it comes down to how we see our individual disabilities: Are they an intrinsic part of who we are? Or are they an identity that comes with a side of agony we would gladly give up? How do we feel when abled people start advocating for “cures”—which may come in the form of eliminating our people entirely—rather than when the desire for a cure comes from disabled advocates?

At first the rebels seemed to play the role of Don Quixote, courageously tilting at invincible windmills. Yet within eighty years the Dutch had not only secured their independence from Spain, but had managed to replace the Spaniards and their Portuguese allies as masters of the ocean highways, build a global Dutch empire, and become the richest state in Europe. The secret of Dutch success was credit. The

So you're saying," I clarified, "that you can punt only middling-well for a sober person." "Do I need to make this thing do backflips?" Watson asked, and dug the pole into the muck. Our boat tilted crazily to the right. I made a high-pitched sound, then clapped a hand over my mouth. "You squealed. Did you just squeal?" "If you have to ask," I said, with some dignity, "then no, I did not." He dug in the pole again, and we spun in a neat circle. I bit my lip when he laughed at me. :Jamie, I swear to God I will pull this boat over -" He lifted the pole again, threateningly. I lunged forward, and Watson leaned backward, and then began windmilling his free arm to keep his balance. I considered pushing him in, but the water smelled a bit like bad fish, and anyway, I liked his shirt too much to ruin it. "You were going to let me drown," he protested, pushing us off again. "Yes. In knee-deep water. It would take some skill, but I believe in you.

She hadn't gone back in time. The idea was silly. Or had she? Had she knocked on the door of her home to see a younger version of herself answer; had there been a mutual shock of recognition (as the younger Rebecca realized that, yes, her husband's work was due to be a success, that he was not wasting his time chasing rainbows and tilting at windmills); had she slipped her arm into that of her past self (feeling a slight electric tingle as skin touched skin and a taste in her mouth as if she'd touched a nine-volt battery to her tongue) and said, We need to to talk? Had she sat in a coffee shop, conversing with a woman who everyone assumed was related to her in some way—Oh my god you two are so cute, you're mother and daughter but you look like sisters? Had she made some kind of idle remark overheard by a man on his way to spend two weeks' vacation in North Dakota; had that comment convinced that man to settle there permanently instead, and to contact those who had political sympathies similar to his own? Had that unknown man begun the slow process of taking over the state by placing his allies in the local governments if he could? Had that strategy failed, leaving brute force as a regrettable last resort?

When you said our engagement is subject to your family’s approval,” he ventured, “I hope you don’t expect it to be unanimous.” “I would like it to be. But it’s not a requirement.” “Good,” he said. “Because even if I manage to talk Trenear into it, debating with West will be like tilting at windmills.” She looked up at him alertly. “Was Don Quixote one of the books you read?” “To my regret, yes.” “You didn’t like it?” Tom gave her a sardonic glance. “A story about a middle-aged lunatic who vandalizes private property? Hardly. Although I agree with Cervantes’ point that chivalry is no different from insanity.” “That’s not at all what he was saying.” Cassandra regarded him ruefully. “I’m beginning to suspect you’ve missed the point of every novel you’ve read so far.” “Most of them are pointless. Like the one about the French bread thief who violated his parole—” “Les Misérables?” “Yes. It took Victor Hugo fourteen hundred pages to say, ‘Never let your daughter marry a radical French law student.’ Which everyone already knows.” Her brows lifted. “Is that the lesson you took from the novel?” “No, of course not,” he said promptly, reading her expression. “The lesson of Les Misérables is …” Tom paused cagily before taking his best guess. “… ‘It’s usually a mistake to forgive your enemies.’” “Not even close.” Amusement lurked at the corners of her mouth. “I have my work cut out for me, it seems.” “Yes,” Tom said, encouraged by the remark. “Take me on. Influence me for the better. It will be a public service.” “Hush,” Cassandra begged, touching his lips with her fingers, “before I change my mind.” “You can’t,” Tom said, knowing he was taking the words more seriously than she’d intended. But the very idea was like an ice pick to the heart. “That is, don’t. Please. Because I …” He couldn’t break their shared gaze. Her blue eyes, as dark as a cloudless midnight, seemed to stare right inside him, gently and inexorably prying out the truth. “… need you,” he finally muttered. Shame caused his face to sting as if from spark burns. He couldn’t believe what he’d just said, how weak and unmanly it had sounded. But the strange thing was … Cassandra didn’t seem to think less of him for it. In fact, she was looking at him with more certainty now, nodding slightly, as if his mortifying admission had just cemented the bargain. Not for the first time, Tom reflected there was no understanding women. 

If we set our lance to tilt at windmills, we should choose windmills where we have some small chance of triumph.

When the club’s face looks to the right of the direction in which the head is traveling, the ball spins around an equator tilted from left to right and thus curves to the right during flight. I’ll do you a favor and not tell you about every stroke. Or any stroke at all. Though I got off some very nice drives. True, they didn’t land on the correct fairway, but that was due to wind. And I will stand mute on the subject of technique except to say I learned that many chip shots are best played with a sharp kick from the toe of a golf shoe. And if you cut a hole in your pants pocket you can drop a ball down your trouser leg and “discover” that your shot landed remarkably close to the green. And putting, for a person of my socioeconomic background, is best done by envisioning the cup as being behind a little windmill or inside the mouth of a cement whale. I also found out that all the important lessons of life are contained in the three rules for achieving a perfect golf swing: 1. Keep your head down. 2. Follow through. 3. Be born with money. There’s a fine camaraderie on a golf course—lumbering around with your fellow Republicans, encompassed by a massive waste of space and cash, bearing witness to prolific use of lawn chemicals, and countenancing an exploitative wage scale for the maintenance employees. Golf is the

Oh, sweetheart, you’ve really twisted yourself into a pretzel, haven’t you? Tilting at windmills. I sent Suzanne to the hotel to give Reama an ARC of my next book. Let’s take her off before she sees it.

Sometimes, before I fall asleep or when I catch a piece of music that lifts my soul, I envision another way to live, like that moment last night when the setting sun hit the top of that rise and the leaves glowed. They were alight with life, and it lasted only a moment. That’s when I suspect I’ve gotten it wrong and I’ve wasted my time, tilting at windmills–not anticipating the unexpected or being present enough to recognize it. ~ A Portrait of Emily Price by Katherine Reay, p. 178

You,” Win would tell him, “have a hero complex. You think you can make the world better. You are Don Quixote tilting at windmills.” “And you?” “I’m eye candy for the ladies.” Win.

Not even that, it was sub-quixotic. My kingdom for a windmill to tilt at.

It’s not that I don’t have convictions, or that I won’t defend them. I save my battles for things that have meaning instead of tilting at every mild irritation that comes my way. You can fritter away your whole life with those kinds of windmills.

They had a lead, a slim one, but it was a stretch to call it an adventure. It wasn't much to hang a quest on. They were trotting along in search of they didn't even really know what, and there was no way to speed up the process, if there even was a process. It was quixotic, was what it was. Not even that, it was sub-quixotic. My kingdom for a windmill to tilt at.

Pakistan’s efforts to consolidate itself by popularizing theology as national or even national-security policy have unleashed violent forces that Pakistan is now contending with. Instead of strengthening the country and raising the morale of its people in permanently confronting India, the ‘Ghazwa-e-Hind’ type of thinking has resulted in terrorist attacks within Pakistan and set the stage for divisions among jihadis that are hurting Pakistan’s security instead of enhancing it. The theologically rooted view of what threatens Pakistan— as opposed to what might really threaten Pakistan—undermines the prospect of a realistic foreign policy. Conspiracy theories and contending interpretations of religious prophecies cast Don Quixotes tilting at windmills as ‘national security experts’ rather than producing hard-thinking analysts anticipating actual policies of other governments.

You cannot change the world through ideas. People with few ideas are less likely to make mistakes; they follow what everyone else does and are no trouble to anyone; they’re successful, make money, find good jobs, enter politics, receive honours; they become famous writers, academics, journalists. Can anyone who is so good at looking after their own interests really be stupid? I’m the stupid one, the one who wanted to go tilting at windmills.