Middle Ages Quotes - Page 12

• Yet for my part, deeply as I am moved by the religious architecture of the Middle Ages, I cannot honestly say that I ever felt the slightest emotion in any modern Gothic church.

  Goldwin Smith

  Religious, Age, Church

  Goldwin Smith (1881). “Lectures and Essays”, New York : Macmillan

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• During all the first part of the Middle Ages, no other people made as important a contribution to human progress as did the Arabs, if we take this term to mean all those whose mother-tongue was Arabic, and not merely those living in the Arabian peninsula. For centuries, Arabic was the language of learning, culture and intellectual progress for the whole of the civilized world with the exception of the Far East. From the IXth to the XIIth century there were more philosophical, medical, historical, religiuos, astronomical and geographical works written in Arabic than in any other human tongue.

  Philip Khuri Hitti

  Mother, Islamic, Philosophical

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• The really frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you'll grow out of it.

  Doris Day

  Birthday, Women, Memorable

  Quoted in A E Hotchner Doris Day (1978).

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• It's like suddenly in the Middle Ages, people figured men should be in charge of women's bodies since they were in charge of pretty much everything else

  Inga Muscio

  Men, People, Age

  Inga Muscio (2002). “Cunt: A Declaration of Independence”, p.56, Seal Press

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• I did a research assignment on life in the Middle Ages only last year. I found the era fascinating, all that chivalry and court romance. But I never pictured anything as poor as this village. This is the pits. There's no romance here, definitely no chivary. And it stinks--of sweat and smoke and sewage.

  Marianne Curley

  Years, Sweat, Romance

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• We three belong to the Middle Ages. We have this need of heroism, and there is no place for such feelings in modern life. That is our tragedy. Once I wanted to be a saint. It seemed the only absolute act left to do, for what is most powerful in me is the craving for purity, greatness.

  Anais Nin

  Powerful, Greatness, Feelings

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• It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

  Andre Gide

  Honor, Age, Literature

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• They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. To-day, wrapped in the complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brush one but lightly and are soon forgotten, but then—how a careless word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a glance over a shoulder, branded themselves as things eternal.

  Daphne du Maurier

  Fall, Brave, Age

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• But I'll never see any of those fish," said Maxie."Or those whales. Or any lions or tigers. I'm never going to set foot in a rain forest now, am I? I won't even be able to watch old DVD's about them without electricity. What does the future hold? It's like going back to the middle ages. Nobody knowing what was going on beyond their front doorstep. All I'll ever know is this. This little bit of London.

  Charlie Higson

  Rain, Knowing, Dvds

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• What folly made young people, even those in middle age, think they were immortal? How much better, their lives, if they could remember the end. Carrying your death with you every day would make it hard to waste time on unkindness and anger and bitterness, on anything petty. That was the secret: remembering your dying time, in order to keep the stupid and the ugly out of your living time.

  Rohinton Mistry

  Life, Stupid, Thinking

  FaceBook post by Rohinton Mistry from Jan 13, 2013

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• there i was in late middle age, cut loose in a thoroughly looted, bankrupt nation whose assets had been sold off to foreigners, a nation swamped by unchecked plagues and superstition and illiteracy and hypnotic tv, with virtually no health services for the poor. where to go? what to do?

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Cutting, Age, Superstitions

  Kurt Vonnegut (1997). “Hocus Pocus”, p.66, Penguin

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• In Venice in the Middle Ages there was once a profession for a man called a codega--a fellow you hired to walk in front of you at night with a lit lantern, showing you the way, scaring off thieves and demons, bringing you confidence and protection through the dark streets.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Dark, Night, Men

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.101, A&C Black

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• In the Middle Ages, cathendrals and convents burned like tinder; imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a World War II movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in flames.

  Umberto Eco

  War, Fire, Flames

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• The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion-not to look around and say, 'Look at yourselves, you idiots!,' but to say, 'This is who we are.

  Anne Lamott

  Mean, Writing, Dark

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.234, Anchor

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• The Middle Ages hangs over history's belt like a beer belly. It is too late now for aerobic dancing or cottage cheese lunches to reduce the Middle Ages. History will have to wear size 48 shorts forever.

  Tom Robbins

  Beer, Lunch, Dancing

  "Jitterbug Perfume". Book by Tom Robbins, 1984.

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• Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.

  Gore Vidal

  Sex, Age, Middle

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• The perceptions of middle age have their own luminosity.

  Gail Sheehy

  Birthday, Perception, Age

  Gail Sheehy (1977). “Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life”, Bantam

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• Elizabeth Peyton, the artist known for tiny, dazzling portraits of radiant youth, is now painting tiny, dazzling portraits of radiant middle age.

  Jerry Saltz

  Artist, Age, Tiny

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• Funny thing about those Middle Ages, said Joseph. "They just keep coming back. Mortals keep thinking they're in Modern Times, you know, they get all this neat technology and pass all these humanitarian laws, and then something happens: there's an economic crisis, or science makes some discovery people can't deal with. And boom, people go right back to burning Jews and selling pieces of the true Cross. Don't you ever make the mistake of thinking that mortals want to live in a golden age. They hate thinking.

  Kage Baker

  Mistake, Hate, Technology

  Kage Baker (2005). “In the Garden of Iden”, p.217, Macmillan

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• One of the odd things about middle age, he concluded, was the strange decisions a man discovers he's made by not really making them, like allowing friends to drift away through simple neglect.

  Richard Russo

  Simple, Men, Decision

  FaceBook post by Richard Russo from Aug 17, 2010

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• Well, He had known what love was-a sharp pang, a fierce experience, in the midst of whose flames he was struggling! but, through that furnace he would fight his way out into the serenity of middle age,-all the richer and more human for having known this great passion.

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Struggle, Passion, Fighting

  Elizabeth Gaskell (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)”, p.1215, Delphi Classics

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• A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument for tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective.’ (1923)

  John Gresham Machen

  School, Mean, Free Education

  John Gresham Machen (1923). “Christianity and Liberalism”, p.14, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• My doctor told me that I really should lose some weight. "You're mildly obese," he said. And I thought, "Well, who couldn't afford to lose 20 or 30 pounds?" He said, "Well, a person in your category." I said, "What is that category, doctor?" He said, "Well, you're what I call upwardly middle aged." And I said, "I forgive you for everything."

  Maya Angelou

  Doctors, Forgiving, Weight

  Source: www.washingtoncitypaper.com

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• We have no functioning parliament in Egypt and months ago Mohammed Morsi assumed legislative functions. Now he's decided that there should be no opposition to the laws that he makes and that he is authorized to pass any national security measure. It is difficult to be more absolutist than that. And the constitutional convention - what a sad gathering; it threatens to send us back to the darkest period of the Middle Ages.

  Mohamed ElBaradei

  Age, Difficult, National Security

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Men's gender problems cause them a lot of suffering. There is a massive spiking suicide rate in middle age for men and a cultural attitude to male friendship that is destructive.

  Stephen Marche

  Suicide, Attitude, Men

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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