Medieval Quotes

It took a long moment, but Gerard finally raised his head and looked Jon in the eye. “It meant that I have not been honest with you, Jon Calder, and if you are to understand the danger you are in now, I must tell you everything, no matter if you believe me or not.

I looked up and beyond him again, focusing in on the horror that swords, arrows, clubs, and staffs left behind on human flesh. The open wounds. The blood, The brokenness. The inglorious remains of war.

Lisa Tawn Bergren

The next time somebody announces that he plans to get Medieval on your ass, tell him you're going to get Renaissance on his gonads.

James K. Morrow

micel walcan wolde we do from that daeg micel walcan in the great holt the brunnesweald but though we walced for wices months years though this holt becum ham to me for so long still we did not see efen a small part of it so great was this deop eald wud. so great was it that many things dwelt there what was not cnawan to man but only in tales and in dreams. wihts for sure the boar the wulf the fox efen the bera it was saed by sum made this holt their ham. col beorners and out laws was in here as they was in all wuds but deop deoper efen than this was the eald wihts what was in angland before menhere i is meanan the aelfs and the dweorgs and ents who is of the holt who is the treows them selfs. my grandfather he telt me he had seen an aelf at dusc one daeg he seen it flittan betweon stoccs of treows thynne it was and grene and its eages was great and blaec and had no loc of man in them. well he was blithe to lif after that for oft it is saed that to see an aelf is to die for they sceots their aelf straels at thu and aelfscot is a slow death

Paul Kingsnorth

I must learn to be as the bear in a cage with the stick that pokes it always, through the bars. The bear acts as if the stick is made of air, and takes no notice of it, even when it is sharpened and draws blood. I must do the same.

Ned Hayes

A modern woman sees a piece of linen, but the mediaeval woman saw through it to the flax fields, she smelt the reek of the retting ponds, she felt the hard rasp of the hackling, and she saw the soft sheen of the glossy flax. Man did not see 'just leather', he saw the beast - perhaps one of his own - and knew the effort of slaughtering, liming and curing.Communities were smaller and whether our man lived on the outskirts of some feudal system, had escaped from it, or was entirely isolated, he would work alone, or daily with the same fellow-workers - conversation would soon languish.But THINK he must.

Dorothy Hartley

Waiting for one’s execution is worse than dying. To seek my beheading is glory. Who went to his execution willingly? Jesus did. Jesus even dragged his cross half way to Golgotha. I think he would have nailed himself to the cross if he had to.

The world is an ambitious business. It continuously expands and evolves. But people are lazy and God is far too lovely to do something about it.

Honor is a balancing act and only the heart can strike that balance.

Wake up! You’re a sacred soul and glory is yours for the taking.

At least I’m the one leaving. It’s so much easier to leave than to be left.

Rooks have clustered on either side of the long road. It is as if they line a grand parade route for our passage. Their black feathers are stark as soot against the white road and the snow. They stab at the ground with their strange bare bills and gray unfeathered faces. The birds are like rough-edged black stones on a string around this stripped cold neck of road. The old books tell us rooks bring the virtuous dead to heaven’s gate.

Ned Hayes

Stars flicker above, points of bright ice in a dark river. I pull a heavy sheepskin around my legs and stretch my feet toward the fire. Despite the cold, Liam plays his flute, the sound whistling through the night. Soon my eyes are heavy, my head nodding.I open my eyes at the deep melodious baritone of Salvius’s voice telling a tale. Liam’s flute is silent now. I have heard Salvius tell many tales on market days; he is known for his memory of wandering minstrels and mummers who visit us at Whitsunday and through Midsummer. Salvius is a mockingbird: he can give a fair charade of the rhythmic tones of any wandering bard or any noble of the Royal Court.In this darkness, his eyes catch the light like a cat in the night.

Ned Hayes

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

Mark Noce

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Do I perceive a softening in your heart for me, damoiselle?" He laughed at her scowl. "Beware maid. I will tell you true. After you will come another and then another. There are no strings that can tether me to any woman. So guard your heart.""My lord, you greatly exaggerate your appeal," she replied indignantly. "If I fell anything for you, 'tis hatred. You are the enemy and you are to be despised as such.""Indeed?" He smiled slowly into her eyes. "Then tell me, damoiselle, do you always kiss the enemy so warmly?

Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

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

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

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

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

Marguerite de Navarre

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

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

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.

Lying is a thriving vocation.

Susanna Centlivre

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

Loose and forbear!

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

Lotoya Peterson

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

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.

Reason, you'll always be half-blind.

Marguerite Porete

Life was a destiny waiting to be seized.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

A bit of fantasy can be good for ones heart

Sylvia Abolis Mennear

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

Lisa Tawn Bergren

It is dangerous to become attached to a du Lac. He will break your heart, and you will not recover.

Mary Anne Yarde

Only in this world of topsy-turvy attitudes could outright stupidity, such as I had displayed, be something that got me high marks. I had an amused glimmering of a notion at that point: If I ever turned out to be a complete and utter fool, I could wind up running the whole kingdom. It was something to consider.

Some time later, I sat in the wine cellar, staring at the walls while cradling a wineskin in my lap like a child, murmuring over and over as if lulling the child to sleep, 'I am shat upon. I am shat upon'.

Youth believes itself immortal. There is a cure for such an attitude, but unfortunately it is a cure from which one never recovers.

In retrospect, I would have to recommend against epiphanies. They are difficult on an emotional level, and they also sometimes move you to foolish and inopportune acts, which was what happened in my case.

Unfortunately, the world does not always act in a manner consistent with one's plans for it.

I guess it really had been brave . . . because it was so bugger-all stupid, and if there was one thing I'd come to realize, ti was that bravery and bugger-all stupidity went hand in hand.

I remember so many things [. . .] The problem is, only half of them are true . . . and the half which is true keeps changing places with the half which is false.

It seemed to me that, no matter what endeavor I was involved in, I was to be something of a sham.

All people are, at heart, egocentric. We exist at the center of our own little universes. We believe that we are living out our lives as best we can, and that we have our own sphere of influence which exists of both friends and enemies. They in turn have their own friends and enemies with whom they interact. That is a given. But we, each of us, tend to put ourselves ahead of others because we believe that we are significant. We must attend to our own needs, desires, wants, and aspirations, because each of us is our own greatest priority. No one else cares for us as much as we do, no one else can exist in our skin. We think we're important. It is where our sense of self-worth comes up, where our egos reside, where "we" are. And we believe that each of our lives means something.

Apropos, you're going to have to learn to sooner or later that you can't just let other people decide what the world around you should and shouldn't be.

Lack of movement is a formidable force to overcome.

There are some for whom the good of mankind is their primary concern, and others who basically put their own considerations before everyone else. I was among the latter.

1 2 Next