
“Why do you lead me a wild-goose chase?”
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 6.
Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 4
“Why do you lead me a wild-goose chase?”
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 6.
1851
Notebooks, The American Notebooks (1835 - 1853)
Context: Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.
Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face
Context: By what right does carnal love say, "I am your hearts and minds as well, and we are indissoluble, and I sweep all along with my strokes of glory and defeat; I am Love!"? It is not true, it is not true. Only by violence does it seize the whole of thought; and the poets and lovers, equally ignorant and dazzled, dress it up in a grandeur and profundity which it has not. The heart is strong and beautiful, but it is mad and it is a liar. Moist lips in transfigured faces murmur, "It's grand to be mad!" No, you do not elevate aberration into an ideal, and illusion is always a stain, whatever the name you lend it.
Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Art-Principle as Represented in Poetry, p.183
Source: Give Me Liberty! (1998), Ch. 7 : The New Slave Master, p. 89
"Baseball Was Very, Very Good to Him," The New York Times (2000-10-29)
Random Thoughts http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell101705.asp, Oct. 17, 2005
2000s
“5222. To run the Wild-Goose Chace.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)