September 6, 1651.
The Diary
“Of ladies, knights, of passions and of wars,
of courtliness, and of valiant deeds I sing.”
Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso
Le donne i cavallier, l'arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto.
Canto I, stanza 1 (tr. David R. Slavitt)
Orlando Furioso (1532)
Matteo Maria Boiardo book Orlando Innamorato
Però che Amore è quel che dà la gloria,
E che fa l'omo degno ed onorato,
Amore è quel che dona la vittoria,
E dona ardire al cavalliero armato
Bk. 2, Canto 18, st. 3
Orlando Innamorato
Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 8, section 5 (p. 904)
Matthew Lewis (writer) (1775–1818) English novelist and dramatist
Walter Scott, manuscript note written in 1825; cited from J. G. Lockhart The Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1896) p. 81 col. 2.
Criticism
John Buchan book A Lodge in the Wilderness
The scene is a society ball in London.
Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. V, p. 145.
“It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.”
Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot
Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 159
Context: It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.
“Then were they afeard when they saw a knight.”
Thomas Malory book Le Morte d'Arthur
Book I, ch. 23
Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1469) (first known edition 1485)
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist
“The Development of Yeats’s Sense of Reality”, p. 89
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
