Jurgen by James Branch Cabell

"But how can I travel with the Equinox, with a fictitious thing, with a mere convention? " Jurgen had said. "To demand any such proceeding of me is preposterous."

"Is it any more preposterous than to travel with an imaginary creature like a centaur? " they had retorted. "Why, Prince Jurgen, we wonder how you, who have done that perfectly unheard-of thing, can have the effrontery to call anything else preposterous! Is there no reason at all in you? Why, conventions are respectable, and that is a deal more than can be said for a great many centaurs. Would you be throwing stones at respectability, Prince Jurgen? Why, we are unutterably astounded at your objection to any such well-known phenomenon as the Equinox! " And so on, and so on, and so on, said they.