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Middle Ages Quotes

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Middle Ages Quotes

“Hiking - I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike! Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, "A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."”

PeopleKnowsAgeBeautifulUsedKnownLandMiddleGoes OnOughtHolyMountainVillageDo You KnowHikingMiddle AgesPilgrimageSaunteringInspiring TravelHiking In The MountainsBeautiful WordsHoly Land
Author:John Muir
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“Book burning is a charming old custom, hallowed by antiquity. It has been practiced for centuries by fascists, communists, atheists, school children, rival authors, and tired librarians. Like everything of importance since the invention of the cloak and the shroud, its origins are cloaked in mystery and shrouded in secrecy. Some scholars believe that the first instance of book burning occurred in the Middle Ages, when a monk was trying to illuminate a manuscript. All agree that book burning was almost non-existent during the period when books were made of stone.”

TryingFirstsBelieveChildrenHas BeensMadeBookAgeSchoolMysteryMiddleCenturyPeriodsStonesImportanceAgreeTiredAtheistInventionInstanceBurningCustomsCommunistScholarCharmingMonkRivalsSecrecyMiddle AgesLibrarianFascistsAntiquityManuscriptsCloaksShroudsBook Burning
Author:Richard Armour
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“In the Middle Ages, the troubadour poets invented the concept of courtly love--a fantasy love, a noble passion, which was also extra-marital and thus inevitably thwarted, illicit, adulterous. One of the medieval terms for it was amour honestus (honest love). I've always wondered why this passionate ideal--masochistic, spiritual-travelled with such wildfire throughout Europe. My poem, a ghazal, takes up the subject.”

AgeSpiritualPassionTermFantasyMiddleSubjectsHonestPoetConceptsEuropeIdealsPassionateNobleExtrasMiddle AgesMedievalAmourWildfiresMasochisticTroubadoursFantasy LoveHonest Love
Author:Edward Hirsch
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“The ills and disorders of the 14th century could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years until at some imperceptible moment, by the some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.”

YearsIdeasMomentsAgeHumanityNextFoundEnergyGrowsMiddleCenturyConsequenceMysteriousBrokeOddRealmsFiftyChemistryDisorderMiddle AgesMold
Author:Barbara Tuchman
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“I lived, particularly in childhood but with lessening intensity right on to middle age, in a world that was peculiarly and intimately my own, scarcely to be shared with others or even made plausible to them. I habitually read special meanings into things, scenes and places qualities of wonder, beauty, promise, or horror for which there was no external evidence visible or plausible to others. My world was peopled with mysteries, seductive hints, vague menaces, "intimations of immortality.”

WorldMadeAgeMy OwnQualityWonderMysteryChildhoodMiddleSpecialPromiseHorrorSceneEvidenceImmortalityVisibleIntensityVagueMiddle AgesHintsSeductiveMenacePlausible
Book:MEMOIRS 1925-1950
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“Those who professed themselves unable to believe in the reality of human progress ought to cheer themselves up, as the students under examination had conceivably been cheered up, by a short study of the Middle Ages. The hydrogen bomb, the South African Government, Chioang Kaidick, Senator McCarthy himself, would then seem a light price to pay for no longer being in the Middle Ages.”

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Book:Lucky Jim
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“Marriage is not something that can be accomplished all at once; it has to be constantly reaccomplished. A couple must never indulge in idle tranquility with the remark: "The game is won; let's relax." The game is never won. The chances of life are such that anything is possible. Remember what the dangers are for both sexes in middle age. A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.”

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Author:Andre Maurois
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“In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, man's dispute with madness was dramatic debate in which he confronted the secret powers of the world; the experience of madness was clouded by images of the Fall and the Will of God, of the Beast and the Metamorphosis, and of all the marvelous secrets of Knowledge”

MenWorldAgeFallSecretMiddleMadnessDebateGods WillDramaticBeastMarvelousDisputesMiddle AgesRenaissanceMetamorphosisCloudedRenaissance Man
Book:Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
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“In tribal times, there were the medicine men. In the Middle Ages, there were the priests. Today, there are the lawyers. For every age, a group of bright boys, learned in their trades and jealous of their learning, who blend technical competence with plain and fancy hocus-pocus to make themselves masters of their fellow men. For every age, a pseudo-intellectual autocracy, guarding the tricks of the trade from the uninitiated, and running, after its own pattern, the civilization of its day.”

MenRunningAgeTodayBoysGroupsMiddleMastersCivilizationIntellectualFellowsTradeMedicinePatternsLawyerTricksFancyPriestsJealousFellow ManCompetenceMiddle AgesPseudoGuardingAutocracyHocus PocusPseudo Intellectuals
Author:Fred Rodell
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“Now the code of life of the High Middle Ages said something entirely opposite to this: that it was precisely lack of leisure, an inability to be at leisure, that went together with idleness; that the restlessness of work-for-work's sake arose from nothing other than idleness. There is a curious connection in the fact that the restlessness of a self-destructive work-fanatacism should take its rise from the absence of a will to accomplish something.”

ShouldSaidSelfFactsAgeTogetherMiddleConnectionsOppositesSakeAccomplishAbsenceCuriousCodeDestructiveLeisureInabilityIdlenessMiddle AgesRestlessnessSelf Destructive
Author:Josef Pieper
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“If the men of the Middle Ages... lived in filth and discomfort, it was not for any lack of ability to change their mode of life; it was because they chose to live this way, because filth and discomfort fitted in with their principles and prejudices, political, moral, and religious.... It was in the power of medieval... craftsmen to create armchairs and sofas that might have rivaled in comfort those of today”

IfsMenWayMightAgeTodayPoliticalReligiousAbilityMoralPrinciplesMiddleHe ManComfortPrejudiceMiddle AgesDiscomfortMedievalFilthSofasCraftsmanArmchairsAbility To Change
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“Under the old social philosophy which had governed the Middle Ages, temporal, and therefore all economic, activities were referred to an eternal standard. The production of wealth, it distribution and exchange were regulated with a view to securing the Christian life of Christian men. In two points especially was this felt: First in securing the independence of the family, which can only be done by the wide distribution of property, in others words the prevention of the growth of a proletariat; secondly, in the close connection between wealth and public function.”

MenFirstsTwoDonePhilosophyAgeChristianPoliticsSocialFeltGrowthWealthViewsEconomyEconomicMiddleActivityEternalStandardsConnectionsFunctionIndependencePropertyProductionsWideChristian LifeLiberalismDistributionMiddle AgesPreventionProletariat
Author:Hilaire Belloc
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“One of the most persistent fallacies about the Christian Church is that it kept learning alive during the Dark and Middle Ages. What the Church did was to keep learning alive in the monasteries, while preventing the spread of knowledge outside them... Even as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, nine-tenths of Christian Europe was illiterate.”

AgeChristianChurchDarkAliveAtheismMiddleCenturyLateEuropeSpreadPositive AtheismNinePersistentMiddle AgesNineteenth CenturyPreventingFallacyIlliterateChristian ChurchMonasteriesKeep Learning
Author:Margaret E. Knight
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“Looking back over a decade one sees the ideal of a university become a myth, a vision, a meadow lark among the smoke stacks. Yet perhaps it is there at Princeton, only more elusive than under the skies of the Prussian Rhineland or Oxfordshire; or perhaps some men come upon it suddenly and possess it, while others wander forever outside. Even these seek in vain through middle age for any corner of the republic that preserves so much of what is fair, gracious, charming and honorable in American life.”

MenAgeEducationVisionForeverSkyMiddleCollegeFairsIdealsUniversityCornersMythDecadesWanderSmokeVainPreservesRepublicLooking BackCharmingHonorableMiddle AgesGraciousElusiveMeadowsAmerican LifeLarksPrincetonColleges And Universities
Author:F. Scott Fitzgerald
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“It was in 1590--winter. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep; it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so forever. Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Belief in Austria. But they meant it as a compliment, not a slur, and it was so taken, and we were all proud of it. I remember it well, although I was only a boy; and I remember, too, the pleasure it gave me.”

WorldWellsSaidStillsBookAgeRememberSpiritualBeliefPleasureBoysForeverTakenMiddleCenturyProudWinterClockComplimentFar AwayMiddle AgesAustriaSlurs
Book:The Mysterious Stranger
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“Gardening is one of the rewards of middle age, when one is ready for an impersonal passion, a passion that demands patience, acute awareness of a world outside oneself, and the power to keep on growing through all the times of drought, through the cold snows, towards those moments of pure joy when all failures are forgotten and the plum tree flowers.”

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Book:Plant Dreaming Deep: A Journal
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“Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age. In writing Dialogues in Limbo, The Last Puritan, and now all these descriptions of the friends of my youth and the young friends of my middle age, I have drunk the pleasure of life more pure, more joyful than it ever was when mingled with all the hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living. Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.”

WritingHumansLittlesAgeLastsYoungSpiritHuman BeingsPleasureMiddleYouthAdventurePureQuietAnxietyDialogueOld AgeDrunkEnjoyedDescriptionJoyfulMiddle AgesTurmoilPuritanAnnoyancePleasures Of LifeLimboYoung FriendsWriting Dialogue
Author:George Santayana
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“The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them, quite rightly, as growing pains. One takes them seriously, listens to them, follows where they lead. ... But in the middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one interprets these life-signs, paradoxically, as signs of approaching death.”

DoeSeemsAgePainGrowthAcceptingDoubtGrowingMiddleYouthPeriodsDespairLongingAssumptionDeclineDecayAdolescenceMiddle AgesDiscontentRestlessnessGrowing PainsFalse AssumptionsApproaching Death
Author:Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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“My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become the imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test.”

FirstsAgeNextGenerationsMiddleShapesTestsStressGuiltSpeciesBurdenScalesGradesFortyFitnessImperativesMiddle AgesMy GenerationGodliness
Book:Making Sense
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“As we reach midlife in the middle thirties or early forties, we are not prepared for the idea that time can run out on us, or for the startling truth that if we don't hurry to pursue our own definition of a meaningful existence, life can become a repetition of trivial maintenance duties.”

IfsIdeasRunningAgeExistenceMiddleDutyPreparedDefinitionsMeaningfulPursueFortyRepetitionMiddle AgesMaintenanceMidlife
Book:Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life
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“A woman's work, from the time she gets up to the time she goes to bed, is as hard as a day at war, worse than a man's working day. ... To men, women's work was like the rain-bringing clouds, or the rain itself. The task involved was carried out every day as regularly as sleep. So men were happy - men in the Middle Ages, men at the time of the Revolution, and men in 1986: everything in the garden was lovely.”

MenWarHardAgeWomenSleepMiddleRevolutionInvolvedBedRainGardenTasksCloudsLovelyGet UpInequalitySexismMiddle AgesMen WomenHappy Man
Author:Marguerite Duras
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