medieval

What kind of person do you wish to be? A part of those who take action, who try the hardest, or of those who go with the flow?

You have to hold on and be patient. Pain lasts for a while, but you must leave room for happiness when you find it.

I beg your pardon. Sometimes, it's true I can be stubborn.' 'Sometimes?' she added derisively. 'Quite often,' he tempered.

she was like the merlin in pursuit of its airborne quarry, perhaps the snow bunting or a small meadow pipit; the avian prey is nimble but so is the predatory merlin with its inexhaustible stamina and unparalleled agility _ round and round it chases the pipit, and the two flying at speeds almost impossible for the observer to follow.

I cannot tell whether diamonds appeared in his eyes or mine as the shine of adoration became the icon one sees in history, a Byzantine sparkle, Medieval armor against all odds.

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Court life for a queen of France at that time was, however, stultifyingly routine. Eleanor found that she was expected to be no more than a decorative asset to her husband, the mother of his heirs and the arbiter of good taste and modesty.

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.

The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is.

Fusing the doctrines of Plotinus and Proclus with the creeds and beliefs of Christianity, Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite combined the Neo-Platonic conviction of the fundamental oneness and luminous aliveness of the world with the Christian dogmas of the triune God, original sin and redemption. The universe is created, animated and unified by the perpetual self-realization of what Plotinus had called "the One," what the Bible had called "the Lord," and what he calls "the superessential Light.

I'd rather have a heart of goldThan all the treasure of the world.

In this martial world dominated by men, women had little place. The Church's teachings might underpin feudal morality, yet when it came to the practicalities of life, a ruthless pragmatism often came into play. Kings and noblemen married for political advantage, and women rarely had any say in how they or their wealth were to be disposed in marriage. Kings would sell off heiresses and rich widows to the highest bidder, for political or territorial advantage, and those who resisted were heavily fined.Young girls of good birth were strictly reared, often in convents, and married off at fourteen or even earlier to suit their parents' or overlord's purposes. The betrothal of infants was not uncommon, despite the church's disapproval. It was a father's duty to bestow his daughters in marriage; if he was dead, his overlord or the King himself would act for him. Personal choice was rarely and issue.Upon marriage, a girl's property and rights became invested in her husband, to whom she owed absolute obedience. Every husband had the right to enforce this duty in whichever way he thought fit--as Eleanor was to find out to her cost. Wife-beating was common, although the Church did at this time attempt to restrict the length of the rod that a husband might use.

It is a joyous thing, war. _You love your comrade so much in war. _When you see that your quarrel is just, and your blood is fighting well, tears rise to your eyes. A great sweet feeling of loyalty and of pity fills your heart on seeing your friend so valiantly exposing his body. _And then your are prepared to go and live or die with him, and for love not to abandon him. _And out of that, there arises such a delectation, that he who has not experienced it is not fit to say what delight is. _Do you think that a man who does that fears death? _Not at all, for he feels so strengthened, so elated, that he does not know where he is. _Truly he is afraid of nothing.

Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker,' said Cleopatra, 'with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How dreadfully we have degenerated!

Once again I felt light-headed, but this time it wasn't from the scent of lilacs; it was from the scent of my own death.

The battered and pathetic thing that represented any claim to conscience I might have had turned away from me in disgust. Oddly, I couldn't blame it. I was disgusted myself. Disgusted at my weakness and my lack of resolution, at my refusal to see justice through in the name of the woman who had borne me.

Imagine the ancient society of India, and in fact all over the world, a few thousands years ago. In those days, rational thinking was quite scarce. Ignorance was the default mode of thinking. Only a handful of individuals were capable of higher intellectual thinking.

It is easy to understand that in the dreary middle ages the Aristotelian logic would be very acceptable to the controversial spirit of the schoolmen, which, in the absence of all real knowledge, spent its energy upon mere formulas and words, and that it would be eagerly adopted even in its mutilated Arabian form, and presently established as the centre of all knowledge.