Medieval Quotes

Are you educated in the art of medicine?” Yeah, the art of Walgreens and Urgent Care. “A bit,” I hedged.

~ Lisa Tawn Bergren

A bit of fantasy can be good for ones heart

~ Sylvia Abolis Mennear

Thus Arthur achieved the adventure of the sword that day and entered into his birthright of royalty. Wherefore, may God grant His Grace unto you all that ye too may likewise succeed in your undertakings. For any man may be a king in that life in which he is placed if so he may draw forth the sword of success from out of the iron of circumstance. Wherefore when your time of assay cometh, I do hope it may be with you as it was with Arthur that day, and that ye too may achieve success with entire satisfaction unto yourself and to your great glory and perfect happiness.

~ Howard Pyle

Ah, life in medieval times! Yeah, we only have to worry about losing our heads every day.

~ David Kuklis

Singing rose up from the convent, filling the woods with a peaceful echo that tried to penetrate her heart and smooth her features; but nothing could ease the pain of saying goodbye.

~ Kate Willis

Sir Wystan,” Ryla stated. “You have come. Is the danger quite near?”“Not yet, little one, but it is always wise to be several steps ahead of it,” the old knight said gently.

~ Kate Willis

No offense, Jaron, but I don't want your life. Even locked away behind closed doors I got a taste for how awful it can be.Did anyone try to kill you while I was gone?No.Then you didn't even get a taste.

~ Jennifer A. Nielsen

I am a knight riding from tower to tower seeking a princess to rescue but all the dragons are slain, the towers are empty and the princesses taken.

~ Pieter Niemand

Life was a destiny waiting to be seized.

~ Karen Azinger

Reason, you'll always be half-blind.

~ Marguerite Porete

When you consider the superstitions and the imaginings of the old Cornish country-folk up to my grandmother's day, how their lives were swaddled in them from the cradle to the grave, their daily actions in large part determined by them - so many things you would not think of doing, like starting a journey on a Friday, or looking at the moon through a pane of glass, or failing to wear something new on Whitsunday - their minds haunted by ghosts and fears, you have a fair idea of what the minds of these people in the sixteenth century were like. It was a life full of shadows that frightened them and dangers that might come home to them; how much more so in those days when their fears had the sanction, and even the corroboration, of the elect and the intelligent: when a uniform religion existed to enforce its lessons and draw the moral. However, no doubt it filled up life for them, made it more interesting and exciting, more mysterious and incalculable; it added a dimension to it, where the modern uneducated, rid of their fears and ghosts, are apt to find life empty and void of meaning.

~ A.l. Rowse

So, apart from casting runes, what other hobbies do you have? Forbidden rituals, human sacrifices, torturing? –

~ Simona Panova

Light - both physical and moral - was a central concern to the men and women living in the medieval age. They attempted to explore its properties in the colors of a stained glass canopy, in the tenor of a brisk saltarello, in the lilt of a Jongleur's ballad, in the sweet savor of a banqueting table, in the rhapsody of a well planned garden, indeed, in every arena and discipline of life.

~ Douglas Wilson Douglas Jones

‎W. H. Auden once suggested that to understand your own country you need to have lived in at least two others. One can say something similar for periods of time: to understand your own century you need to have come to terms with at least two others. The key to learning something about the past might be a ruin or an archive but the means whereby we may understand it is--and always will be--ourselves.

~ Ian Mortimer

Most of the tools from medieval times were extensions of the physical self. Tools are now extensions of the mental self.

~ Lotoya Peterson

I remember the fire, it burns bright, always around me. I close my eyes, and tears stream out. The tides of the past seize me, bear me out to sea.

~ Ned Hayes

The wiry man scratched his head, looked the two inquisitors up and down and cleared his throat softly. “We must be quick.” He turned to go, pulling his cloak over his head and shuffling through the door into the moonlight. The two inquisitors moved with impossible silence behind, floating across the straw-covered floor like the cats on the walls outside the hut. The cats froze at the disturbance before scurrying noiselessly into the shadows as the three silhouettes crossed the ten yards of grass before the blackness of the forest swallowed them. No fires flickered at this time, when the full moon was highest in the cloudless summer sky, and the three were the only waking souls in the hamlet.

~ Gregory Figg

Perhaps the palms had been whispering warnings in the sultry breeze.

~ T.l. Parker

Shadowed beneath his brow bone were cold dark eyes containing secrets and sadness, bitterness and grief.

~ T.l. Parker

Loose and forbear!

~ Mark Twain

The modern mind is merely a blank about the philosophy of toleration; and the average agnostic of recent times has really had no notion of what he meant by religious liberty and equality. He took his own ethics as self-evident and enforced them; such as decency or the error of the Adamite heresy. Then he was horribly shocked if he heard of anybody else, Moslem or Christian, taking his ethics as self-evident and enforcing them; such as reverence or the error of the Atheist heresy. And then he wound up by taking all this lop-sided illogical deadlock, of the unconscious meeting the unfamiliar, and called it the liberality of his own mind. Medieval men thought that if a social system was founded on a certain idea it must fight for that idea, whether it was as simple as Islam or as carefully balanced as Catholicism. Modern men really think the same thing, as is clear when communists attack their ideas of property. Only they do not think it so clearly, because they have not really thought out their idea of property.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Lying is a thriving vocation.

~ Susanna Centlivre

The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should guard against the encroachment of religion in areas where it has no place, and in particular the control of education by religious authority. The attempts to ban the teaching of evolution or other scientific theories -- a feeble echo of medieval church tyranny and hostility to learning, but an echo nonetheless are serious threats to freedom of inquiry and should be vigorously combated.

~ S.t. Joshi

The medievalist has the capacity, and the desire, to harmonize. He believes the planets sing in harmony; why cannot technology also sing?

~ Douglas Wilson

You are not blamed for your unwilling ignorance, but because you fail to ask about what you do not know.... For no one is prevented from leaving behind the disadvantage of ignorance and seeking the advantage of knowledge.

~ Augustine Of Hippo

People pretend not to like grapes when the vines are too high for them to reach.

~ Marguerite De Navarre

My good friends, things cannot go on well in England, nor ever will until everything shall be in common, when there shall be neither vassal nor lord, and all distinctions levelled; when the lords shall be no more masters than ourselves. How ill they have used us!

~ John Ball

My good friends, things cannot go on well in England, nor ever will until everything shall be in common, when there shall be neither vassal nor lord, and all distinctions levelled.

~ John Ball

He was a strong and noble lord with piercing eyes of grey. He sat upon his noble throne shining like the dawn. His sword flashed like the brightest star. He led our people well. Yet here and now he lays in blood pierced with arrows. He was the friend of many knights. He loved the warrior games. His heart was won by a lady fair for marriage they did wait. A kindly prince, his duty carried him to another's bed. And on her death true love returned, finally they wed. He felt the grief of children lost to murder and to pain. I was the youngest of his blood. I'll never be the same. Here lays my father and my lord. I know not what to say. Except my father and my lord was slain here on this day. Here lays my father and my lord. I know not what to say. Except my father and my lord was slain here on this day….

~ Laurel A. Rockefeller

I am not yet come of age, my lord. How can I be queen?” asked Constance fearfully.

~ Laurel A. Rockefeller

You tug and strain like a young horse when it's first tied up at the stake, whenever you are tied by your heartstrings.

~ Sigrid Undset

And you dare to wear the golden spurs of a knight? You dare to call yourself a Marshal of France and carry the fleur-de-lis on your coat of arms? The meanest lackey in this hall knows more of honour and loyalty than you! Hang and burn my servants and kill me - kill too, now that you have handed your companion-in-arms Arnaud de Montsalvy, to your cousin. With my last breath, I shall call on Heaven to witness that Gilles de Rais is a traitor and a felon!

~ Juliette Benzoni

A sudden yearning to hold Artagan close overtakes me, to smell the scent of his skin and run my hands through his tousled black hair. He will soon ride into peril again as he has many times before. No matter how often he rides away, I never get used to it.

~ Mark Noce

My blood runs cold. Her savage stare and bloodied hands leave no doubts in my mind as she glares up at us from across the battlefield. This must be the fabled Queen of the Picts.

~ Mark Noce

Hot-blooded men make war. It’s up to cool-headed queens like us to make the peace.

~ Mark Noce

Under the sanctuary are the catacombs where the dead wait for resurrection. The living do not venture there. The caverns here underneath the Sanctuary are illuminated only by dim shafts of light from the sanctuary. The walls are etched with flowers of frost, but at least I am out of the wind. Dark bays line the hall in front of me, a vast rabbit warren, each hold filled to the brim with the scent of the past.

~ Ned Hayes

1150 AD, the north of EnglandMelina avoided the eyes of her bodyguard. It was something she was becoming adept at, since her father had brought him into the household and given him the task of keeping watch over her all day, every day, and sleeping across the threshold to her chamber every night. But it was no use. Even with her head turned she could feel his dark eyes upon her.Deep dark pools that drew her into their depths, making her skin burn and her heart flutter. The one and only time she’d made the mistake of gazing into those eyes she’d paid the price, losing her wits entirely for several heartbeats. The man was handsome in a rugged way, his body hard and strong like a warrior’s should be, but it was more than that.There was something . . . Was it the look of him, the scent of him, the taste of him? Not that she’d touched his skin with her tongue yet, but she’d thought about it. At night, in her chamber, in her luxurious bed with its furs and curtains, all alone with him outside her door. Oh yes, Melina had the makings of a sensual woman and that was the trouble.

~ Evie North

Science, which is only another name for truth, now holds religious charlatans, self-deceivers and God agents in a certain degree of check--agents and employees, I mean, of a mythical, medieval, man-made God, anthropomorphic in constitution.

~ Luther Burbank

In the cities of the European Franks, women roam about exposing not only their faces, but also their brightly shining hair (after their necks, their most attractive feature), their arms, their beautiful throats, and even, if what Ive heard is true, a portion of their gorgeous legs; as a result, the men of those cities walk about with great difficulty, embarrassed and in extreme pain, because, you see, their front sides are always erect and this fact naturally leads to the paralysis of their society. Undoubtedly, this is why each day the Frank infidel surrenders another fortress to us Ottomans.

~ Orhan Pamuk

I’m all alone against the darkness. Dark winds rising against me.

~ Mark Noce