Thomas Bulfinch Quotes

The preparatory education of candidates for knighthood was long and arduous.

The word knight, which originally meant boy or servant, was particularly applied to a young man after he was admitted to the privilege of bearing arms.

ON the decline of the Roman power, about five centuries after Christ, the countries of Northern Europe were left almost destitute of a national government.

The earliest form in which romances appear is that of a rude kind of verse.

Religion united its influence with those of loyalty and love, and the order of knighthood, endowed with all the sanctity and religious awe that attended the priesthood, became an object of ambition to the greatest sovereigns.

The other classes of which society was composed were, first, freemen, owners of small portions of land, independent, though they sometimes voluntarily became the vassals of their more opulent neighbors, whose power was necessary for their protection.

We thus see that the Greeks of the early ages knew little of any real people except those to the east and south of their own country, or near the coast of the Mediterranean.

Your arrows may strike all things else, Apollo, but mine shall strike you.

Alas! For shame," said Sir Launcelot, "that ever one knight should betray another! But it is an old saw, a good man is never in danger, but when he is in danger of a coward.

Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated.

The sunflower is a favorite emblem of constancy

So near the track of the stars are we,
That oft, on night's pale beams,
The distant sounds of their harmony
Come to our ears, like dreams.

The Moon, too, brings her world so nigh,
That when the night-seer looks
To that shadowless orb, in a vernal sky,
He can number its hills and brooks.

To the Sun god all our hearts and lyres,
By day, by night, belong;
And the breath we draw from his living fires
We give him back in song,

The word Chivalry is derived from the French cheval, a horse.

If no other knowledge deserves to be called useful but that which helps to enlarge our possessions or to raise our station in society, then Mythology has no claim to the appellation.

Shields were generally made of wood, covered with leather, or some similar substance. To secure them, in some sort, from being cut through by the sword, they were surrounded with a hoop of metal.

It has, therefore, been a favorite boast of the people of Wales and Cornwall, that the original British stock flourishes in its unmixed purity only among them.