"Middle Ages" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... greaves of the same fabric and material with his corslet; and a slave bore behind him his bright helmet, triply crested with crimson horsehair, his oblong shield charged with a silver thunderbolt, and his short broad-sword of Bilboa steel, which was already in those days, as famous as in the middle ages. He looked, indeed, every inch a captain; and if undaunted valor, unbounded energy, commanding intellect, an eye of lightning, unequalled self-possession, endless resource, incomparable endurance ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... find Shakespeare's knowledge of books in his own tongue beginning after the Conquest. The romances of the Middle Ages were in the Elizabethan time rapidly undergoing the process of degradation that was soon to end in the chap-books, but the material was still widely known. The particular versions read by the dramatist can rarely be determined ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... centuries of the principle of which he was the representative with baser, or at least less precious matter—extolled, through the recurrence to that principle, in its pure, unsophisticated essence, in the present —in a word, to the simple Imaginative Christianity of the middle ages, as opposed to the complex Reasoning Christianity of recent times. Creeds therefore are at issue, and no exclusive partisan, neither Catholic nor Protestant in the absolute sense of the terms, can fairly appreciate Fra Angelico. Nevertheless, to those who regard society as progressive ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... of an invasion of the Saxons, who have taken Cologne, killed many Frankish nobles, and laid waste the country. A racy epitome of the events which follow has been given by Ludlow in his Popular Epics of the Middle Ages (1865) as follows: "Charles invades Saxony, and reaches the banks of 'Rune the Deep,' beyond which lies Guiteclin's palace of 'Tremoigne' (supposed to be Dortmund, in Westphalia). The river is too deep to be crossed by the army, although the two young ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... skilful directors. But what will you do to keep away the black dog[1266] that worries you at home? If you would, in compliance with your father's advice, enquire into the old tenures and old charters of Scotland, you would certainly open to yourself many striking scenes of the manners of the middle ages.[1267] The feudal system, in a country half-barbarous, is naturally productive of great anomalies in civil life. The knowledge of past times is naturally growing less in all cases not of publick record; and the past time of Scotland is so unlike the present, that it is already ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... and later for almost any offense, has rapidly developed as an institution. Within the past fifty years [16] there have been lynched in the South about 4,000 Negroes, many of whom have been publicly burned in the daytime to attract crowds that usually enjoy such feats as the tourney of the Middle Ages. Negroes who have the courage to protest against this barbarism have too often been subjected to indignities and in some cases forced to leave their communities or suffer the fate of those in behalf of whom they speak. These crimes of white men were at first kept secret but during the last two ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... during the Napoleonic War had acquired a certain amount of constitutional freedom, was on the restoration of the Bourbons thrown back, so far as government was concerned, into the Middle Ages; with the same result as in the other Kingdoms of Italy, insurrection, finally suppressed by Austrian power. The same movement occurred in all the different States of Italy and in all the basis of revolt was the same—a desire for ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... account of the necessary knowledge of preservative chemicals, the art seems to have been in the hands of chemists and astrologers, chiefly, during the middle ages, and stuffed animals such as bats, crocodiles, frogs, snakes, lizards, owls, etc., figure in literary descriptions of their abodes. Then as now also, the dining halls of the nobles and wealthy were decorated with heads and ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... universal history, more studious of effect than accuracy, in which the author ranges over the whole history of the world, from the creation down to the year 1186. This was a specimen of a kind of writing in which the Middle Ages abounded—namely, chronicles, which gradually superseded the monkish legends, and for a time eclipsed the classics themselves; a kind of writing hovering between history and fiction, embracing the widest sweep, written in a barbarous style, and swarming with ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... never climbed so far. War's flaming torch never stained that pure and snowy light. Swords never flashed among those white defiles. Angels of peace guard the tops of the Andes. There is truce to all the rage of earth. During the middle ages, an interval in every week was sacred from the assaults of foes. It was called the Truce of God. Not for three days, but for countless ages, from the birth of time to the final consummation, on these snowy summits of the Andes shines in pure ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... In the middle ages, furnishing of rooms was scanty, and embroidered hangings, cushion and stool covers provided the necessary notes of colour and comfort; the wall hangings of the 13th century were of coarse canvas decorated with a design ...
— Jacobean Embroidery - Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor • Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands
... The prevailing rock is sandstone, and it is broken up in fantastic peaks, or great cubical blocks with flat tops and vertical walls, resembling the mesas of New Mexico. At night, their dark masses, rising on every hand, might be mistaken for frowning fortresses or massive strongholds of the Middle Ages. They seem to mark the line where the volcanic forces which raised the high islands in the Bay of Fonseca had their first conflict with the sedimentary and primitive rocks of the interior. The river is full ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... such a story into my sketches of travel, and showing how the little narrative brought into view some of the characteristics of the people of Sicily. After that I discoursed of the present commerce of Italy as compared with that of the Middle Ages. ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... mongrel people, made up of various scraps and remnants of the many primitive tribes; only a few really Latin families, the descendants of the distinct sub-race that came along with the Umbro-Sabellians from the East remaining. And, while the latter preserved their distinct colour down to the Middle Ages through the Sabine element, left unmixed in its mountainous regions, the blood of the true Roman was Hellenic blood from its beginning. The famous Latin league is no fable, but history. The succession of kings descended from the Trojan Aeneas is a fact; and the idea that ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... feels neither anger nor sympathy; he neither censures, nor moralizes; for the self-satisfied Middle Ages cannot conceive the possibility of a different world. Brief, quick, he despises aims and methods, his only object is to entertain his auditors. Amusing and witty, he cares ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... you some idea of human vicissitudes. Gil Blas didn't change his condition more often than this monument its purposes. Before Caesar it was a Gaelic temple; Caesar converted it into a Roman fortress; an unknown architect transformed it into a military work during the Middle Ages; the Knights of Baye, following Caesar's example, re-made it into a fortress; the princes of Savoy used it for a residence; the aunt of Charles V. lived here when she came to visit her church at Brou, which she never had ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... hall, with high panellings and a roof of dark, polished wood. There were about twenty guests at table; and if they and the waiters had been dressed in mediaeval costume, we might have imagined ourselves banqueting in the Middle Ages. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... youth before her, on his aristocratic beauty—the artist's brow, the splendid hair, everything that appealed to her suppressed feminine instincts, and tiny tears moistened her eyes for an instant and immediately dried up. She looked like one of those meagre statues which the sculptors of the Middle Ages carved on monuments. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... in general, be said to reveal that, whatever the imperfections of our own age, we have immeasurably improved in many pronounced respects over conditions earlier than our own. The idealized picture of the Middle Ages with its guardsmen and its courtly knights and ladies, is coming, with increasing historical information, to seem insignificant and untrue in comparison with the unspeakable hardships of the mass of men, the evil social and sanitary conditions, the plagues and pestilences ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... people is that the new settlers hold their possessions from the conqueror on terms essentially contractual. The actual agreements have varied constantly in detail, but the main principle has always been one of reciprocal rights and duties. So at the early dawn of the Middle Ages, after the period picturesquely styled the Wanderings of the Nations, we find the subjugating races have encamped in Europe, and hold it by a series of fiefs. The action, for example, of William ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... was a partial explanation of his partial failure. When he was denouncing the dresses of modern ladies, 'upholstered like arm-chairs instead of being draped like women,' as he forcibly expressed it, he would hold up for practical imitation the costumes and handicrafts of the Middle Ages. Further than this retrogressive and imitative movement he never seemed to go. Now, the men of the time of Chaucer had many evil qualities, but there was at least one exhibition of moral weakness they did not give. They would have laughed at the idea of dressing themselves in the ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... not think so. That is the creed of the new censorship. And very sensible, too. It is an odd thing that the Middle Ages of the Inquisition were so nonsensical, judged by our standards. Grand inquisitors cared remarkably little how a man thought provided he did not say what he thought too publicly. If he went to church once a year he might be a Jew for all their interference. If he ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... and striking figure in the history of civilization. Nevertheless he would to-day be remembered only by scholars and students of the Middle Ages were it not for the fact that he inspired the most enduring love that history records. If Heloise had never loved him, and if their story had not been so tragic and so poignant, he would be to-day only a name known to but a few. His final resting-place, in the cemetery ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... the castle in which he sought the secrets that were to give to hope in the Future a mightier empire than memory owns in the Past. It was one of those baronial fortresses with which Italy was studded in the earlier middle ages, having but little of the Gothic grace of grandeur which belongs to the ecclesiastical architecture of the same time; but rude, vast, and menacing even in decay. A wooden bridge was thrown over the chasm, ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... captivating and poetical divinity of the heathen theocracy had probably been made; but the original space between the pillars had been filled up with rubbish of a modern date, and the rest of the building was apparently of the architecture of the latter end of the Middle Ages. It was situated at one end of the building which had once been the seat of the Inquisition, and had served, before the erection of the present see, as the residence of ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... classes into which, from the earliest times, the population of the Roman State was divided, the former of which possessed rights and privileges not conceded to the latter, and stood to them as patrons to clients, like the baron of the Middle Ages to the vassals. This inequality gave rise to repeated and often protracted struggles in the commonalty, during which the latter gradually encroached on the rights of the former till the barrier in civic status, and even in social to some extent, was as good ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... bundle of cloth, leaves, or whatever he wished on a pile, in which the thing stolen might be hidden. Upon the completion of this investigation if the stolen property was found in the pile, the suit ceased." The Filipinos also practiced customs very similar to the "judgments of God" of the middle ages, such as putting suspected persons, by pairs, under the water and adjudging guilty him who ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... villages nestle amid groves of mulberry trees. Among these mountains we find several human races, several forms of government, and several schemes of religion, yet everywhere liberty: a proud, feudal aristocracy; a conventual establishment, which in its ramifications recalls the middle ages; a free and armed peasantry, whatever their creed, Emirs on Arabian steeds, bishops worthy of the Apostles, the Maronite monk, the ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... across the channel to Rotterdam, up the Rhine and on to Berlin, where he would meet us. Mrs. Hill really seemed glad to have us go with them and, to be very frank, I think the Rev. Dr. Blackmore was glad to get rid of us. You see, Jess and I simply can't get enthusiastic over the Middle Ages and old manuscripts, and ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... Dutch West India Company, who purchased land in New Netherlands of the Indians, and after fulfilling certain conditions imposed with a view to colonizing their territory, enjoyed feudal rights similar to those of the barons of the Middle Ages. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Middle Ages was all dressed up like a hardware store with, I should judge, about a hundred pounds of armor. But he rode a horse and had a squire or some such striker trailing along in the rear with the things to make him comfortable, when the fighting ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... them; these showing it a scheme of villeinage, more oppressive than the European serfdom of the Middle Ages. The issue is sufficient proof of this. For it was falling to pieces, long before the Anglo-Saxon race entered into possession of the territory where it once flourished. The missions are now in a state of decadence, their buildings fast falling into ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... political struggle of the Middle Ages, the contest between the Crown and the Church, two things are to be noted; first, that at least in the earlier period the Church was on the popular side. Thomas Beckett was canonized, it is true, formally and by regular decree; but his memory was held so dear ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... were standing round them, and, in their midst, Pellerin was giving vent to his ideas. The form of government most favourable for the arts was an enlightened monarchy. He was disgusted with modern times, "if it were only on account of the National Guard"—he regretted the Middle Ages and the days of Louis XIV. M. Roque congratulated him on his opinions, confessing that they overcame all his prejudices against artists. But almost without a moment's delay he went off when the voice of ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... evolution of Nature has been symbolized, reaching its climax in the tower, where the scheme is continued in several groups in Chester Beach's best style. The lowest of these groups shows the Primitive Age, followed above by the Middle Ages and Modernity. The great charm of this finest of all the towers in the Exposition is its wonderful rhythmic feeling. The graceful flow of line from the base toward the top is never interrupted, in spite of the many sculptural adornments used on all sides. In front of the tower are two ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... at his feet, as he sat down, was the tombstone which (in the tradition) lies above the imperial victor who sits below waiting with his scepter in his hand and his white beard ever growing—the king of the Middle Ages. How many, many potentates, great and small, during all the intervening centuries, had bowed their heads and spoken words of reverence in the presence of the only sepulchre remaining in situ and intact of the world-conquerors of antiquity! Of all ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... and he never dreamed that Tomaso thought so highly of his ability. In the Middle Ages the secrets of such arts as glass-making, enameling, leather work, gold and silver work, and the making of dyestuffs, were most jealously guarded. Alan had had two fortunate accidents in his life; he had been taught in the beginning by a master- artist, ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... ages from the time when the Emperor Diocletian prescribed a distinct ritual for Aurelius as one of the gods; from the time when the monks of the Middle Ages treasured the 'Meditations' as carefully as they kept their manuscripts of the Gospels, the work has been recognized as the precious life-blood of a master spirit. An adequate English translation would constitute to-day a most valuable vade mecum of devotional feeling ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... middle ages, when the belief in the old heathen deities was partly forgotten, the leader of the Wild Hunt was no longer Odin, but Charlemagne, Frederick Barbarossa, King Arthur, or some Sabbath-breaker, like the Squire of Rodenstein or Hans von Hackelberg, who, in punishment for his sins, was condemned ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the Middle Ages the conscientious German was doing more for this helpless element of his population than England and America are doing to-day. He saw that some of his daughters would remain unmarried, and that if they were gently bred he must provide for their future, and he did this by ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... been deluded into thinking that the so-called Middle Ages were quite over and done with. It isn't so long ago, in the year eighteen hundred and thirty-seven, as a matter of fact, that a widow named Mayer was publicly broken on the wheel right here in the city of Berlin on Hausvogtei Square,—[He displays fragments ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... founded hospitals: all became patrons of the Fine Arts on such a scale of munificence, that the protection of the most renowned princes has been mean and insignificant in comparison." Nor is this their only claim; for the earliest artists of the Middle Ages were monks of the Benedictine Order. "As architects, as glass painters, as mosaic workers, as carvers in wood and metal, they were the precursors of all that has since been achieved in Christian Art: and if so few of these ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who go to France are modern crusaders. Like the valiant men of the Middle Ages who traveled far to fight in strange lands for the ideal that possessed their souls, these twentieth-century knights-errant go to defend the ideals of liberty and right and honor which are the issues of this war and which our Allies have successfully upheld ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... countrymen. Here he lay, grimly watching for the proper time and opportunity when to sally forth and strike. His position, so far as it sheltered him from his enemies, and gave him facilities for their overthrow, was wonderfully like that of the knightly robber of the Middle Ages. True, his camp was without its castle—but it had its fosse and keep—its draw-bridge and portcullis. There were no towers frowning in stone and iron—but there were tall pillars of pine and cypress, from the waving tops of which the warders ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... knowledge we possess of an obscure matter, has called "Erec and Enide" the oldest Arthurian romance extant. It is not possible to dispute this significant claim, but let us make it a little more intelligible. Scholarship has shown that from the early Middle Ages popular tradition was rife in Britain and Brittany. The existence of these traditions common to the Brythonic peoples was called to the attention of the literary world by William of Malmesbury ("Gesta regum Anglorum") ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... would be very easy. The times of most of the eclipses would be predicted within a few hours, and the conjunctions of the planets within a few days. Thus it was possible for the astronomers of the Middle Ages to prepare for their own use, and that of the people, certain rude predictions respecting the courses of the sun and moon and the aspect of the heavens, which served the purpose of daily life and perhaps lessened the confusion arising from their complicated calendars. ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... some delightful lectures from Longfellow on the literature of the Middle Ages. He read us some of his own original poems and some beautiful translations. All the substance of these lectures I think is to be found in his book entitled "The Poets and Poetry of the Middle Ages." I do not see that we gained anything of solid instruction ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... peculiar sanctum, and it revealed at once her taste and her power of gratifying it. The tapestry that covered two sides of the room could be seen at a glance to be no mere modern imitation, but a priceless relic of the earlier middle ages. The other walls were so thickly hung with pictures that one could scarcely see the pale-green satin beneath; and among these paintings the Count's educated eye recognized the work of Raphael, Botticelli, Turner, and Gainsborough among other masters; while beneath the cornice hung ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... monastery on the Porto Fino road was like a pleasant little glimpse into the brighter realities of the Middle Ages. The place, which is used as a home of rest for convalescent Carthusians, chanced to be quite empty and deserted; the Bavarian rang a jangling bell again and again and at last gained the attention of an old gardener working in the vineyard above, an ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... classical authors for the Romans, who strove and contrived to imitate them. After the great periods of Roman literature, after Cicero and Virgil, the Romans in their turn had their classics, who became almost exclusively the classical authors of the centuries which followed. The middle ages, which were less ignorant of Latin antiquity than is believed, but which lacked proportion and taste, confused the ranks and orders. Ovid was placed above Homer, and Boetius seemed a classic equal to Plato. The revival of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries helped to ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... states of physical matter—to "earth, water, air and fire," or to translate from mediaeval symbolism to modern accuracy of expression, to the solid, liquid, gaseous and etheric conditions. It has long been the custom to pity and despise the ignorance of the alchemists of the middle ages, because they gave the title of "elements" to substances which modern chemistry has discovered to be compounds; but in speaking of them thus slightingly we have done them great injustice, for their ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... there were established in the Middle Ages, two religious houses, within a mile of one another, on opposite sides of the swirling river. On the north bank, not far from Marrick village, you may still see the ruins of Marrick Priory in its beautiful situation much as Turner painted ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... lawyers in the department, those of Lyons and Besancon, had been retained by the prisoners for their defence. Each had spoken in turn, destroying bit by bit the indictment, as, in the tournaments of the Middle Ages, a strong and dexterous knight was wont to knock off, piece by piece, his adversary's armor. Flattering applause had followed the more remarkable points of their arguments, in spite of the usher's warnings and the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... The victory was decided by the number of knights unhorsed. The prizes to the victors were adjudged and delivered by the queen and the ladies. This authority of the fair sex contributed greatly to polish the manners of the nobility and gentry of the middle ages, who were anxious to court the favour of those who were the distributors ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... deemed to have souls and to possess psychic properties, they were thought to derive them from evil sources, and so strong was the prejudice against these unfortunate animals on this account, that all through the Middle Ages we find them suffering such barbaric torture as only the perverted minds of a fanatical, priest-ridden people could devise (which treatment, no doubt, partly, at all events, accounts for the many palaces, houses, etc., in those particular countries, stated ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... shadows without limit. There was no other illumination, except for the glow here and there of pipes and cigarettes, or matches flaring for a moment. Barring the tobacco, we lay like a baron's men-at-arms in Europe of the Middle Ages, with a captive woman to make sport with in the midst, only rather too self-reliant for ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... feel this stoppage of its Chicago beef and Armour pork, and the world would grumble and know for once that Chicago fed it. Inside the city there was talk of a famine. The condition was like that of the beleaguered city of the Middle Ages, threatened with starvation while wheat and cattle rotted outside its grasp. But the enemy was within its walls, either rioting up and down the iron roadways, or sipping its cooling draughts and fanning itself with the garish pages of the morning ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... never pursued professionally. It was, however, prosecuted with much zeal en amateur. The Chinese bureaucratic system has been wanting. For in spite of her students, until within thirty years Japan slumbered still in the Knight-time of the Middle Ages, and so long as a man carried about with him continually two beautiful swords he felt it incumbent upon him to use them. The happy days of knight-errantry have passed. These same cavaliers of Samurai are now thankful to police ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... with the main land. The highest summit of this rocky pile was called Mount Athos in ancient times, and is so marked upon the map. In modern days it is called Monte Santo, or Holy Mountain, being covered with monasteries, and convents, and other ecclesiastical establishments built in the Middle Ages. ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... first saw an astonishing wall, perpendicular to my road, untouched, the bones of the Middle Ages. It stood up straight before one like a range of cliffs, seeming much higher than it should; its hundred feet or so were exaggerated by the severity of its stones and by their sheer fall. For they had no ornament whatever, and few marks of decay, though ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... on the origin of language; on the crossing or blending of languages; on the absence of the idea of God in certain races of men; on early marriages of the poor; on the middle ages. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... would have saved me from his own Black Decree. And I would have been touched by his clemency? I would have accepted, the grateful tears streaming from my eyes? And thus I would be regenerated? It sounds beautiful. It sounds like the chivalrous Middle Ages, when there were Black Princes along with the Black Decrees. My liege lord he would have been, but my liege Patria, what of her?—Well, well, well, he has three days in which to understand me better, and to think of ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... middle ages there was, with a large number of cities, a decisive moment when the building of city halls and cathedrals became a violent passion, which had to be satisfied at any price; the life of the community depended upon ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... Alexander's sword shall conquer the world; when Plato shall teach the philosophy which all men who think must know; and when Pericles shall bid the arts blossom in a perfection which is the despair of succeeding generations. And so in the Middle Ages there is barbarism enough, with its lawlessness and ignorance; but there is also faith, courage, strength, which tell of youth, and point to a time of mature faculty and high achievement. There is the rich purple dawn which ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... tea at Carlyle's, found him "simple, natural and kindly, his conversation as picturesque as his writings." She "had an amusing evening at Mr. Hallam's"; he made her "quite forget he was the sage of the 'Middle Ages.'" At Hallam's she met Sydney Smith who was "in the vein, and we saw him, I believe, to advantage. His wit is not, as I expected, a succession of brilliant explosions but ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... one of the details of Gothic carving of which Flanders is full. I do not know whether the thing is old, though it was certainly knocked about and indecipherable, but at least it was certainly in the style and tradition of the early Middle Ages. It seemed to represent men bending themselves (not to say twisting themselves) to certain primary employments. Some seemed to be sailors tugging at ropes; others, I think, were reaping; others were energetically pouring something into something else. This is entirely characteristic ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... fathers, and [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] is reigning in its stead. We believe that we have advanced upon, not degenerated from our ancestors, except here and there as by way of back eddy, but Italians in the Middle Ages may be excused for having been overawed by the remains of the old splendour which met them everywhere; and even if this had not been so, to children and half-educated people that which happened long ago is always grander and larger than any like thing that happened recently. ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... action. Though of admiration to the manes of departed heroism is like burning incense in a marble monument. Words, ideas, feelings, with the progress of time harden into substances: things, bodies, actions, moulder away, or melt into a sound, into thin air!—Yet though the Schoolmen in the Middle Ages disputed more about the texts of Aristotle than the battle of Arbela, perhaps Alexander's Generals in his lifetime admired his pupil as much and liked him better. For not only a man's actions are effaced and vanish with ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... conformity involved one of the three offences: idolatry, murder, and unchastity (including, incest and adultery). But while this decision throws a favourable light on the Rabbinic theory of life, it can in no sense be called a fixation of a creed. There were numerous synods in the Middle Ages, but they invariably dealt with practical morals or with the problems which arose from time to time in regard to the relations between Jews and their Christian neighbours. It is true that we occasionally read ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... pictures are here very unequal. In one or two he is imitating Turner, but it is to have "confusion worse confounded." And singularly enough, in such imitations, his subjects are of repose. "A Scene in the Middle Ages, suggested by a visit to Haddon Hall," is very pleasing. The style here is suggestive, and judiciously so; he generalizes, and we are pleased to imagine. We see elegant figures walking under shade of trees, clear refreshing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... against arbitrary rule. Loftier ideas of human rights, larger conceptions of commerce, have taught mankind, in later days, the difference between liberties and liberty, between guilds and free competition. At the same time it was the principle of mercantile association, in the middle ages, which protected the infant steps of human freedom and human industry against violence and wrong. Moreover, at this period, the tree of municipal life was still green and vigorous. The healthful flow of sap from the humblest roots to the most verdurous branches indicated the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is only the name of a sacred place of refuge during the middle ages, upon which the scene of the drama was ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... Polo, the greatest traveller of the Middle Ages, who visited China in the thirteenth century," the speaker began, taking a paper from the table, and reading as follows in regard to the Grand Canal: "'Kublai caused a water communication to be made in the shape ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... deal to say to the craving for a stimulant, and men in India, who never drink in England, there consume "pegs" and cheroots enormously. Of course, tobacco is to be put out of account in relation to great workers and thinkers up to the close of the middle ages, but the experience of antiquity would lead one to infer that the moderate use of wine, at all events, was not unfavourable to the highest brain development and physical force. Bismarck and Moltke ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... I will tell you why I wished to have the picture. I read that no one knew the artist, nor whom the picture represents. But it is very clearly a philosopher of the Middle Ages. Just such a picture I wanted for my gallery, for you are aware that no one knows the author of the 'German Theology,' and moreover, that we have no picture of him. I wished to try whether the picture of an Unknown by an Unknown would answer for our German ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... scholar enough to mix up with the real Munchausen's (p. 106) amusing burlesques, exaggerations and fancies which are centuries older, and which can be cited now from the crabbed language of the Middle Ages.—Note. ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... forty young women were rhythmically advancing and retreating before the footlights, picturesquely habited in a military costume comprising powdered wigs, three-cornered hats, gold-embroidered blue coats, flesh-colored tights, and kid top-boots, which dated uncertainly from the middle ages. They sang, as they crossed their varyingly shapely legs, stamped their feet, and formed into figures no drill-book ever saw, a chorus of which ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... speak of "Lady's Bedstraw," where they once spoke of "Our Lady's Bedstraw." We have dropped the comparatively democratic adjective, and kept the aristocratic noun. South England is still, as it was called in the Middle Ages, a garden; but it is the kind where grow the plants called ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... led across a part of the beautiful promenade, and the equally beautiful Ziel street, and later through the narrow streets of the middle ages, and in a short time they stood before the mighty buildings called the Kaiser Cathedral, so called because from the year 1711 the ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... feet long, pointed with deer's horn, each carrying two feathers twisted about the shaft. They, like the bow and quiver, were fine specimens of workmanship and would have compared favorably with those used by the great English archers of the Middle Ages. ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... and heavy, and the whole effect was dull and lifeless. But no matter how inadequate such a picture may seem to us to-day, and no matter how much it seems to lack the depth and sincerity of reality, it possessed for the people of the Middle Ages a mystic charm which had its influence. These pictures were often supposed to have miraculous power, and there are many legends and ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... university is a distinctly mediaeval one; the Middle Ages were above all things gifted with a genius for organization, and men were regarded, and regarded themselves, rather as members of a community than as individuals. The student in classical times had been free to hear ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... of scholarship and hospitality the Wellesley College Library never forgets. Her Plimpton collection of Italian manuscripts is a treasure-house for students of the Italy of the Middle Ages and Renaissance; and her alumnae, as well as scholars from other colleges and other lands, are given ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... past. Her civilization is older than that of the nations of northern Europe—the nations from whom the people of the United States have chiefly sprung. But fifty years ago Japan's development was still that of the Middle Ages. During that fifty years the progress of the country in every walk in life has been a marvel to mankind, and she now stands as one of the greatest of civilized nations; great in the arts of war and in the arts ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... favourite classic of the early fathers of the church and of the Middle Ages, whom Jerome, Tertullian, and Augustine speak of as "Seneca noster," who was believed to have corresponded with St. Paul, and upon whom [Footnote: On the "De Clementia," an odd subject for the man who burned Servetus alive for differing with him.] Calvin wrote a commentary, seems ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... 'of short duration.' Aevum, in the sense of aetas, is rather poetical, and does not occur till a rather late period; whence the common expression medium aevum, 'the middle ages,' is not exactly in accordance with the best Latinity. [2] Invenias; supply quam naturam humanam. [3] Grassatur, the same as ingreditur, 'advances towards;' but grassari has the additional meaning ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... subserve sensual gratification, nor depend upon fashion, but upon the feeling of the beauty, comfort, and welfare, attendant upon cleanliness; and a regard to this feeling is coincident with wealth and civilisation. The rich in the middle ages concealed a want of cleanliness in their clothes and persons under a profusion of costly scents and essences, whilst they were more luxurious in eating and drinking, in apparel and horses. With us a want of cleanliness ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... that in the first or old comedy of the Athenians, most of the 'dramatis personae' were living characters introduced under their own names; and no doubt, their ordinary dress, manner, person and voice were closely mimicked. In less favourable states of society, as that of England in the middle ages, the beginnings of comedy would be constantly taking place from the mimics and satirical minstrels; but from want of fixed abode, popular government, and the successive attendance of the same auditors, it would still remain in embryo. I shall, perhaps, have occasion to observe that this ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... beneath hid many of the towers and battlements, but he saw lights shining from lofty windows, and about the castle were many small houses. He surmised that Zillenstein and its surroundings had not changed much since the Middle Ages. Here was the castle, and below it were the cottages and huts of the peasants and retainers who might be as loyal as ever to the prince whose lineage was more ancient than that of either ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... this little incident as an example of the fact that when a man cracks a joke in the Middle Ages he's apt to affect the sausage market in the Nineteenth Century, and to lay open an honest butcher to the jeers of every dog-stealer in the street. There's such a thing as carrying a joke too far, and the fellow who keeps on pretending to believe ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... that investigation has the least taint of rationalism. In their supreme disgust for innovations they have made our Church as inflexible and unfit for the various conditions of modern life as the customs and practises of the Middle Ages would be out of place now. They have been completely oblivious of the fact that there are necessarily change and progress in theology and religion as well as in everything else. True, there are certain ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... of the very few aristocratic families really dating from the Middle Ages, and their pennon had actually seen Palestine. But it is a great mistake to suppose that such houses stand high in chivalric tradition. Few except the poor preserve traditions. Aristocrats live not in traditions but in fashions. The Bohuns had ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... place, or at any rate chiefly so, indeed all the way from Cervieres we have been among people half Protestant and half Romanist; these were the Waldenses of the Middle Ages, they are handsome, particularly the young women, and I should fancy an honest simple race enough, but not ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... his prayer between; but before we came to the palace-tomb of the Escorial, we had clear in the distance the vision of the walls and roofs and towers of the medieval city of Avila. It is said to be the perfectest relic of the Middle Ages after or before Rothenburg, and we who had seen Rothenburg solemnly promised ourselves to come back some day from Madrid and spend it in Avila. But we never came, and Avila remains a vision of walls and roofs and towers tawny gray glimpsed in a rift of the storm that again swept toward ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... his one book, the Imitation of Christ, which continues to be printed as a religious classic, and is unsurpassed as a manual of private devotion. His monastic life—as was true generally of the monastic life of the middle ages—was not one of useless idleness. The Brethren taught school and did mechanical work. Besides, before the invention of printing had been perfected and brought into common service, the multiplication of books was principally the work ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... Professor, and more purely scientific and historic, when he reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, and down to the end of the Seventeenth Century; the true era of extravagance in Costume. It is here that the Antiquary and Student of Modes comes upon his richest harvest. Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... insurance will alone be taken, as being the most typically maritime and by far the most interesting historically. Ordinary insurance on land is a mere thing of yesterday compared with marine insurance, which, according to some, began in the ancient world, and which was certainly known in the Middle Ages. It is credibly reported to have been in vogue among the Lombards in the twelfth century, and on much the same principles as are followed by Canadians in the twentieth. It was certainly in vogue among the English ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... the table; upon her right sat the most distinguished-looking man Mavis had ever seen. Tall, finely proportioned, with noble, regular features, surmounted by grey hair, he suggested to Mavis a fighting bishop of the middle ages: she wondered who he was. The soldier on her left talked incessantly, but, to Mavis's surprise, he made no mention of his campaigns; he spoke of nothing else but rose culture, his persistent ill-luck at flower shows, the unfairness of the judging. The meal was long and, ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... rogue regarded his future master with the awe which a good Catholic feels for the Eucharist. Honest Wirth was a kind of Gaspard, a beer-drinking German sheathing his cunning in good-nature, much as a cardinal in the Middle Ages kept his dagger up his sleeve. Wirth saw a husband for Isaure, and accordingly proceeded to surround Godefroid with the mazy circumlocutions of his Alsacien's geniality, that most adhesive of all known ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... that is interesting connected with the sanctuary, the cloisters, and the chapter-house, that I shall devote my next talk specially to those buildings. The abbot's house, now the deanery, saw many notable scenes in the Middle Ages. Especially was it so with the Jerusalem Chamber, of which the low rough wall runs off from the south side of the western portal of the Abbey. There is an entrance to it from the nave. It was in this chamber that Henry IV. died. He was purposing a journey to the Holy Land, when, in 1412, ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... it happened that a cult of the Middle Ages was in vogue, and the Duke had been told there that the rough North land was the one good thing left in ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... you blab like this you'll be tarred and feathered. Girl alive, can't you keep a still tongue in your head? If you'd lived in the Middle Ages you'd have ended your days in ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... scale, at Coutances. The effect of the arrangement comes out in perfection at Le Mans. Altogether, little as the building seems to be known, the thirteenth-century work at Le Mans undoubtedly entitles it to rank among the noblest churches of the middle ages. One point more on the Romanesque church of Le Mans. The original design embraced two towers at the end of the transept, like Exeter, Ottery, and seemingly Saint Martin's at Tours. These towers were destroyed by order of William Rufus, who charged the Bishop Hildebert ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... looks as if humanity were reverting to its types, with an honest effort at simplicity. There is a revival of the moral individuality of the middle ages. The despot proudly says, like Alexander, or Montrose in love, that he will reign, and he will reign alone; and he does. The financier plunders mankind and does not pretend that he is a long-lost type of philanthropist. The anarchist proclaims that it is virtuous to kill kings, and ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... demand has been keen from the first. Hipparchus and the Greek astronomers of the Alexandrian school, shaking off the vagaries of magic and divination, placed astronomy on a scientific basis, though the reaction of the Middle Ages caused even such a great astronomer as Tycho Brahe himself to revert for a time ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... Through this language the vernacular citizen escapes from his parochial and national limitations to a wide commonweal of thought. Such was Greek at one time to the Roman, such was Latin to the Bohemian, the German, the Englishman or the Spaniard of the middle ages, and such it is to-day to the Roman Catholic priest; such is Arabic to the Malay, written Chinese to the Cantonese or the Corean, and English to the Zulu or the Hindoo. In Germany and France, to a lesser degree in Great ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... there are so many paintings and sculptures in Italy is this: in the middle ages, it was the fashion, in all the central parts of Europe, for the people to spend almost all their surplus money in building and decorating churches. Indeed, there was then very little else that they could do. At the present time, people invest ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... in relation to morals? And the answer is to the same effect, that morals must take care of themselves. There is a one-sided truth in these answers, if they are regarded as condemnations of the interference with commerce in the last century or of clerical persecution in the Middle Ages. But 'laissez-faire' is not the best but only the second best. What the best is, Plato does not attempt to determine; he only contrasts the imperfection of law with the wisdom ...
— Statesman • Plato
... wild traditions, the stronghold of chivalrous legends, the spell-land of witchcraft, the especial haunt and home of goblin, specter, sprite, and gnome; all the beautiful and fanciful creations of the poetical imagination of the Middle Ages. You are, I suppose, in Germany; intellectually speaking, almost the antipodes of America. Germany is now the country to which my imagination wanders oftener than to any other. Italy was my wishing land eight years ago, but many things have dimmed that southern vision ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... age, and we must not expect to find in the Renaissance a passion for an acquaintance with things as they are such as we ourselves have; but still its grasp of facts was far firmer than that of the Middle Ages. ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... the middle of the Dark Ages, that the Norman and his followers effected their successful landing and lodgement here; it was in the later years of the fifteenth century,—it was when the bell that tolled through Europe for a century and a half the closing hour of the Middle Ages, had already begun its peals, that the Tudor 'came in ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... early Renaissance had to work out their Ovidian stories for themselves, and work them out of their own material. Hence the mythological creatures of these early painters are all, more or less, gods in exile, with that charm of a long residence in the Middle Ages which makes, for instance, the sweetheart of Ritter Tannhaeuser so infinitely more seductive than the paramour of Adonis; that charm which, when we meet it occasionally in literature, in parts of Spenser, for instance, or in a play like Peel's ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... picturing the scene. Prettilove is an inoffensive little rabbit of a man. Marigold might sit for the model of a war-scarred mercenary of the middle ages, and when he called a man a liar he did it with accentuaton and ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... probably the greatest English pamphleteer at a time when the pamphlet had to do all the work of the leading article and most of the work of the platform. His churchmen's gown sat uneasily on him; he was like one of the fighting bishops of the Middle Ages, with whom armor was the more congenial wear. He had a fierce and domineering temper, and indeed out of his strangely bright blue eyes there was already beginning to shine only too ominously the wild light of that ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... from Du Chaillu's "Land of the Midnight Sun," in which the construction of one which was unearthed at Nydam in Jutland is described (Vol. I. 380). The galley "Viking" built in Norway on the model of an actual Viking ship of the early Middle Ages, was taken across the Atlantic in 1893 by a Norwegian crew of fourteen, anchoring in Lake Michigan, after a voyage in which they had no shelter except an awning and cooked their own food as ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... schismatics from the Great Church of living humanity, who allowed the ministrant faculty of reason to assume an unlawful supremacy over the higher powers of intellect, and gave birth to that voracious despotism of barren dialectics, in the middle ages commonly called the scholastic philosophy. The Greek philosophy, however, even its noblest Avatar, Plato, much less in the case of a Zeno or an Aristotle, was never able to achieve that which must be the practically proposed end of all higher philosophy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... British prince. 2. A very great king. 3. An inventor in the middle ages. 4. A small town in Buckinghamshire. 5. An English bishop who suffered martyrdom. 6. An extensive region of Southern Asia. 7. An ancient province of ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... no idea what pleasure it gives me to hear you speak thus," said Morcerf. "I had announced you beforehand to my friends as an enchanter of the 'Arabian Nights,' a wizard of the Middle Ages; but the Parisians are so subtle in paradoxes that they mistake for caprices of the imagination the most incontestable truths, when these truths do not form a part of their daily existence. For example, here is Debray ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... nothing of Madagascar, the steppes of Central Asia, and some of the islands of the Eastern Archipelago—how great an amount of marvel and mystery must have enveloped the countries of the East during the period that we now term the middle ages! By a long and toilsome overland journey, the rich gold and sparkling gems, the fine muslins and rustling silks, the pungent spices and healing drugs of the Morning Land, found their way to the merchant princes of the Mediterranean. These were not all. The enterprising ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... in this respect, in spite of all the conquests of science, in the same position as in the darkest and most barbarous days of the Middle Ages. All deplore this state of things—neither peace nor war—and all would be glad to escape from it. The heads of governments all declare that they all wish for peace, and vie with one another in the most solemn protestations of peaceful intentions. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... which His English Majesty was not guilty, and those were cowardice and hypocrisy. He was a plain, unvarnished villain, and he never hesitated for a moment to let people see it. Queen Isabelle had been termed "the Helen of the Middle Ages," alike from her great beauty, and from the fact that her husband abducted her when betrothed elsewhere. She can hardly be blamed for this, since she was a mere child at the time: but as she grew up, she ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... and little truth, were blended, we arrive at that period, when the spirit of discovery began to manifest itself amongst some of the European states. The darkness and lethargy, which characterised the middle ages, had cast their baneful influence over every project, which had discovery for its aim, and even the invaluable discovery of the mariner's compass, which took place at the commencement of the thirteenth century, and which opened to man the dominion of the sea, and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... What pleasant little suppers—But no matter—my supper time is past—"Too late, too late, you cannot enter here," ought to be the warning inscribed over every Club or other supper-room, addressed chiefly to those who are of the Middle Ages, as is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... more important than the past, and those sciences which contribute to our comfort, place within the reach of the laborer and mechanic as common necessaries what would have been the highest luxury to the Roman emperor or to the king of the Middle Ages, contribute to health and the preservation of life, and by the development of railroads make possible such a gathering as this,—these sciences, we cheerfully admit, outrank our modest enterprise, which, in the words of Herodotus, is "to preserve from decay the remembrance ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... regards external affairs. But as regards groups within a state, it is internal independence that must be emphasized, since that is what is lacking; subjection to law has been secured, on the whole, since the end of the Middle Ages. In the relations between states, on the contrary, it is law and a central government that are lacking, since independence exists for external as for internal affairs. The stage we have reached in the ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... we handle a very old book, and turn its well-worn pages, thumb-marked and dog-eared by men of Oxford or of Florence in the Middle Ages! Unless we are the baldest materialists, we will not reserve for the parchment body of some old book the respect called forth by its soul. The latest re-embodiment of an ancient writer, fresh from the presses of Putnam or of Appleton, merits the honor belonging ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... Burgundian and Spanish wars of France should take this opportunity of seeing what may be seen of the town of Dole and its massive church-tower. The sieges of Dole made it very famous in the later middle ages, more especially the long siege under Charles d'Amboise, at the crisis of which that general recommended his soldiers to leave a few of the people for seed,[46] and the old sobriquet la Joyeuse was ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... into the middle ages, tattooing seems to have been confined to criminals. It was used as branding was formerly in Europe, whence probably the contempt still felt for tattooing by the Japanese upper classes. From condemned desperadoes to bravoes at large is but a step. The swashbucklers of ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... and in the state that it is casked, the oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, that living or dead, if but decently treated, whales as a species are by no .. means creatures of ill odor; nor can whalemen be recognised, as the people of the middle ages affected to detect a Jew in the company, by the nose. Nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant, when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; taking abundance of exercise; always out of doors; though, it is true, seldom ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... likewise we find numerous degraded types in which the rising religion is marred ...... Of this we have eminent instances in the gods of Greece, and in the fairies of the German and Persian tribes ...... Under the same head will be included the grotesque devil-stories and other legends of the Middle Ages ...... Yet the dreadful alternative of gross superstition is this, that the graver view tends to cruel and horrible rites, while the fanciful and sportive sucks out the life-blood of devout feeling." (Ibid. pp. 14-16.) Then comes ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... titles, Mr. Jarvis?" asked the girl, one evening. "When you made your recessional into the Middle Ages by taking the feudal oath to me, you were flippant, almost sarcastic: yet by my standards, I could not feel that any man could defend my interests with propriety unless he were of my own people—so, you were adopted with more seriousness than ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... Many years spent in travels and special studies, and an extensive collection of interesting documents, qualify him beyond all contemporaries for such an undertaking. He treats not merely the architecture of the middle ages, but sculpture, mural painting, painting on glass, mosaic work, bronzes, iron work, the furniture of churches, &c. The book is to be published in fifteen parts, quarto, with engravings on steel, or colored lithographs. Eight parts ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... wander into far-away countries for their subjects: to Sodom and Lesbos. The best known is Michael Kouzmine. This writer, who happily began with stories of the Orient in the Middle Ages, has now acquired a rather sad renown for himself with his story called "The Wings," which appeared at the end of 1906. The scandalous success which this book won, encouraged the author to go on in the same manner. In poor verse, and especially in the story, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... a gymnastic exercise. Acute powers of observation and memory might be developed by studying Chinese characters; acuteness in reasoning might be got by discussing the scholastic subtleties of the Middle Ages. The simple fact is that there is no isolated faculty of observation, or memory, or reasoning any more than there is an original faculty of blacksmithing, carpentering, or steam engineering. Faculties mean simply that particular impulses and habits have been coordinated ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... of preventing its becoming opened up to modern traffic; and it is accordingly curious to find how much of its old manners, customs, traditions, and language has been preserved. It looks like a piece of England of the Middle Ages, left behind on the march. Witches still hold their sway on Dartmoor, where there exist no less than three distinct kinds— white, black, and grey,*[9]—and there are still professors of witchcraft, male as well as female, in ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... inventions of the highwaymen of the Middle Ages to extort gold from their captives were renewed here and there to secure conversions: the feet of the victims were scorched, they were strappadoed, suspended by the feet; young mothers were tied to the bedposts, while their infants at the breast ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... produce over the passes of the Alps to the Upper Danube and the Rhine. Here it was a source of wealth to the cities along the waterways, from Ratisbon and Nuremburg, to Bruges and Antwerp. Even the slightest acquaintance with the history of the Middle Ages must suffice to give the student an idea of ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... the last sacrament, there sprang up a bitter enemy to the government which had closed the churches and proscribed the priests. How could a society whose spiritual life had been nourished in the solemn mysticism of the Middle Ages suddenly turn to embrace a gaudy paganism? The common self-respect of humanity was outraged by apostate priests ... as they filed before the Convention, led by the Archbishop of Paris, and accompanied by ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... possible? Are we yet in the middle ages?" he began. But he checked himself and said to ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... gold and silver-smiths of the middle ages, the Roman money-lenders united both trades. See afterwards, NERO, c. 5. It is hardly necessary to remark that vases or vessels of the compound metal which went by the name of Corinthian brass, or bronze, were esteemed even more ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... vacant pages, by the following lively particulars respecting "Patrick, the Apostle of the Irish." They are extracted from a work lately published, under the title of, "Light in Dark Places; or Memorials of Christian Life in the Middle Ages," which is stated, in the preface, to be translated from a German work by the late Augustus Neander. Patrick flourished in the early part of the fifth century, before the Romish yoke was imposed upon the British churches, but not before much superstition had become mixed with ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... the head-lights there stepped a strange figure, strange, that is to say, in these tame modern times. In the Middle Ages he would have excited no comment at all. Passers-by would simply have said to themselves, "Ah, another of those knights off after the dragons!" and would have gone on their way with a civil greeting. But in the present ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... tied by his theme—a colonizing expedition in a barbarous age, no worse book could have been selected: [Footnote: 'No worse book could have been selected.'—The probable reason for making so unhappy a choice seems to have been that Virgil, in the middle ages, had the character of a necromancer, a diviner, &c. This we all know from Dante. Now, the original reason for this strange translation of character and functions we hold to have arisen from the circumstance ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the whole of the West. The Middle Ages still heard it. For centuries his sermons and treatises were copied over and over again; they were repeated in cathedrals, commented in abstracts of theology. People came to accept even his theory of the fine arts. All that we have inherited from the ancients reaches ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... one of his daughters—pretty girls they were, too, and in charm altogether worthy of their Cousin Sam Clemens—was to be married, and Sellers wrote me a stately summons, all-embracing, though stiff and formal, such as a baron of the Middle Ages might have indited to his noble relative, the field marshal, bidding him bring his good lady and his retinue and abide within the castle until the festivities were ended, though in this instance the castle was ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... of principles: they depend on the place; the time; the geographical position; and the evolution which society is accomplishing. If the heavens had created me an ancient Greek, my principle would have been to battle for freedom against Asiatics, and to be enamoured of a beautiful boy. If in the Middle Ages, I should have fought for the honor of my lady and burnt men alive on blazing piles. In the Orient, I should possess, openly, a number of wives, accommodated only to my wish; in the West, principle ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... prisoners, to require bail for their appearance at the sessions, to collect fines or penalties levied by the court of the shire, to preserve the public peace, and to preside in a subordinate tribunal of their own." Durham's Middle Ages, sec. 2, B. 2, ch. 1. - 57 Lardner's ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... name of Irans, and whom Herodotus styles the Arioi. They are, moreover, the Sarmatic Medes of the ancients, and belong to the Median colony founded in the Caucasus by the Scythians. They are the As or Alains of the middle ages. And lastly, they are the Iasses of Russian chronicles, from whom some of the Caucasus range took their name of the Iassic Mountains." This is not the place to discuss identifications belonging to the realm of criticism. We will content ourselves ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... various historians. And last, though not least, we find it imperishably recorded in the cathedrals, and abbeys, and parish churches, which tell of the inventive genius and taste and skill of our pious fathers in the middle ages[26]. ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... of the authors has been to narrate events and portray character accurately and impartially, but in the sympathetic spirit that recognizes the wide difference between modern standards of conduct and the ideals of the Middle Ages,—the spirit that strives to depict vividly and adequately the fine, strong virtues and great deeds that won for these knights the unbounded admiration of their own age, rather than to dwell upon those traits and acts that are justly condemned by the finer moral sense of the ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... The existence of patches devoid of feeling was considered in the Middle Ages to prove that the subject was a witch. Hence needles were run into the supposed witch. And if she felt them in every part of her body she ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... something that is useful to mankind. To do anything well with your hands, useful or not; to be, even in trifling, [Greek: palamesi daemon], is already much. When we come to examine the art of the Middle Ages, I shall be able to show you that the strongest of all influences of right then brought to bear upon character was the necessity for exquisite manual dexterity in the management of the spear and bridle; and in your own ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... were the worst bother. His mother was a long-footed woman, and the toes of the boots sailed ahead of Chippy's feet, and turned up, after the style of the boots of the Middle Ages, as depicted in history-books, and went flip-flop-flap before him as he walked. And so Chippy had come to visit the Wolf Patrol as a friend ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... escape worshipping the idols of the marketplace. There are, it is true, not wanting signs that his view of the true relations of States and Churches may become one day more dominant, for it appears as though once more the earlier Middle Ages will be justified, and religious bodies become the guardians of freedom, even in the political sphere. Still, a successful career in public life could hardly be predicted for one who felt at the beginning that "I agree with nobody, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... we were once told, "Heaven's first law," but social order, human experience declares, comes before the recognition of equality of personal rights within that order. The great lady of the Middle Ages who begged of her King a "new Lord" within a month after the death of her husband because her "lands were being taken and her estate defrauded by hostile lords who surrounded her castle," and only a husband for herself, a new father for her children and a new owner for the inherited ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer |
