“We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder.”

— André Maurois

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder." by André Maurois?

André Maurois photo

André Maurois 202

French writer 1885–1967

Related quotes

“The Renaissance discovery of nature was an invention of nineteenth-century liberalism which played off the Renaissance delight in nature against the Middle Ages, in order to strike a blow at the romantic philosophy of history. For when Burckhardt says that the ‘discovery of the world and of man’was an achievement of the Renaissance, this thesis is, at the same time, an attack on romantic reaction and an attempt to ward off the propaganda designed to spread the romantic view of medieval culture. The doctrine of the spontaneous naturalism of the Renaissance comes from the same source as the theory that the fight against the spirit of authority and hierarchy, the ideal of freedom of thought and freedom of conscience, the emancipation of the individual and the principle of democracy, are achievements of the fifteenth century. In all this the light of the modern age is contrasted with the darkness of the Middle Ages.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

Source: The Social History of Art', Volume II. Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque, 1999, Chapter 1. The Concept of the Renaissance

“.. how with the [Dutch] Romantic movement after 1830 also the love awakened for everything that recalled former times to the mind - including the period of the middle-ages -, and how the sigh grew from it to collect all kind of objects that reassured the taste of those times. Here too, the celebrated [Dutch romantic painter] Nuyen stood in front.”

Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891) Dutch painter

version in original Dutch (citaat van Johannes Bosboom, in Nederlands): ..hoe met de Romantische beweging na 1830 ook de liefde ontwaakte voor alles wat vroegere tijden — ook het tijdvak der middeneeuwen — voor den geest riepen en hoe daaruit de zucht ontsproot tot het verzamelen van voorwerpen, die van den smaak dier tijden getuigden. Ook hierin stond de gevierde Nuyen vooraan.
Quote of J. Bosboom, c. 1890; as cited in De Hollandsche Schilderkunst in de Negentiende Eeuw, G. H. Marius; https://ia800204.us.archive.org/31/items/dehollandschesch00mariuoft/dehollandschesch00mariuoft.pdf Martinus Nijhoff, s-'Gravenhage / The Hague, tweede druk, 1920, p. 108 translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)
the studio of Bosboom was more or less a small museum, exposing his collected objects from the middle-ages
1890's

“We are apt to form romantic and exaggerated notions about the moral innocence of our ancestors. Ages of ignorance and simplicity are thought to be ages of purity. The direct contrary, I believe, is the case…In the middle ages, not only the most flagrant violations of modesty were frequently practised and permitted, but the most infamous vices. Men are less ashamed as they are less polished.”

Thomas Warton book The History of English Poetry

The History of English Poetry (1774-81) vol. 1, p. 431.

“Our true Happiness will be when humanity begins to recognise the rights we owe to one another, when hatred turns to love.”

Mirza Masroor Ahmad (1950) spiritual leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community

Others

“He [Paolo Sarpi] was one of the two foremost Italian statesmen since the Middle Ages, the other being Cavour.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 3

“One can love two children. But your heart can be given romantic love to only a single other, said Woolsey.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“I beg of you to take this warning seriously, even though these people may be crazies. Since the invention of gunpowder, crazies have been bad news.”

Robert Sheckley book Hunter/Victim

Source: Hunter/Victim (1988), Chapter 40 (p. 185)

“I think I may have been the first grown man in the world to fall truly, passionately, sexually, romantically and sentimentally in love. I practically invented it.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

“Ressentiment is always to some degree a determinant of the romantic type of mind. At least this is so when the romantic nostalgia for some past era (Hellas, the Middle Ages, etc.) is not primarily based on the values of that period, but on the wish to escape from the present. Then all praise of the “past” has the implied purpose of downgrading present-day reality.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 68

“The invention of printing and the Reformation are and remain the two outstanding services of central Europe to the cause of humanity.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6

Related topics