Quotes about chivalry

A collection of quotes on the topic of chivalry, men, age, man.

Quotes about chivalry

“I truly love our Code of Chivalry. We are taught that noblemen must take everything and say nothing. Noblemen must stand alone. Well, we're men, and men aren't born to stand alone.
-Myles of Olau”

Tamora Pierce book Alanna: The First Adventure

Source: Alanna: The First Adventure

Love, Men

“What if custom is wrong? demanded the part of her that believed in the code of chivalry. A knight must set things right.”

Tamora Pierce book First Test

Source: First Test

Parting

“The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Book II, Chapter 5.
Books, Coningsby (1844), The Young Duke (1831)

Age, Past

“I have sometimes amused myself by endeavouring to fancy what would be the fate of an individual gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race. Of course he would be conscious of his superiority; nor could he (if otherwise constituted as man is) help manifesting his consciousness. Thus he would make himself enemies at all points. And since his opinions and speculations would widely differ from those of all mankind — that he would be considered a madman is evident. How horribly painful such a condition! Hell could invent no greater torture than that of being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong.In like manner, nothing can be clearer than that a very generous spirit — truly feeling what all merely profess — must inevitably find itself misconceived in every direction — its motives misinterpreted. Just as extremeness of intelligence would be thought fatuity, so excess of chivalry could not fail of being looked upon as meanness in the last degree — and so on with other virtues. This subject is a painful one indeed. That individuals have so soared above the plane of their race is scarcely to be questioned; but, in looking back through history for traces of their existence, we should pass over all the biographies of the "good and the great," while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

Pain, Fate, Feeling, History

“The negro is fundamentally the biological inferior of all White and even Mongolian races, and the Northern people must occasionally be reminded of the danger which they incur in admitting him too freely to the privileges of society and government. …The Birth of a Nation, … is said to furnish a remarkable insight into the methods of the Ku-Klux-Klan, that noble but much maligned band of Southerners who saved half of our country from destruction at the close of the Civil War. The Conservative has not yet witnessed the picture in question, but he has seen both in literary and dramatic form The Clansman, that stirring, though crude and melodramatic story by Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr., on which The Birth of a Nation is based, and has likewise made a close historical study of the Klu-Klux-Klan, finding as a result of his research nothing but Honour, Chivalry, and Patriotism in the activities of the Invisible Empire. The Klan merely did for the people what the law refused to do, removing the ballot from unfit hands and restoring to the victims of political vindictiveness their natural rights. The alleged lawbreaking of the Klan was committed only by irresponsible miscreants who, after the dissolution of the Order by its Grand Wizard, Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, used its weird masks and terrifying costumes to veil their unorganised villainies.
Race prejudice is a gift of Nature, intended to preserve in purity the various divisions of mankind which the ages have evolved.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Response to observations made in In A Minor Key by Charles D. Isaacson, in The Conservative, Vol. I, No. 2, (1915), p. 4
Non-Fiction

War, People, Age, Law

“Some say that the age of chivalry is past, that the spirit of romance is dead. The age of chivalry is never past, so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Romantic, Age, Past, Dead

“For me chivalry isn't dead; it's an involuntary reflex.”

Jim Butcher book Summer Knight

Source: Summer Knight

Dead

“Even if I’d been wide awake, I knew Dimitri would’ve taken my suitcase anyway. That’s how he was, a lost remnant of chivalry in the modern world, ever-ready to help others.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

World, Help

“The Senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight I mean the harlot, Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words.”

Charles Sumner (1811–1874) American abolitionist and politician

"The Crime against Kansas," speech in the Senate (May 18, 1856). The claims made against Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina so angered Butler's cousin, Democrat Representative Preston Brooks, that Brooks assaulted Sumner with a cane in the Senate chamber a few weeks later

Love, Books, World, Courage

“The mere management of arms, though essentially requisite, was not sufficient of itself to form an accomplished knight in the times of chivalry; it was necessary for him to be endowed with beauty, as well as with strength and agility of body; he ought to be skilled in music, to dance gracefully, to run with swiftness, to excel in wrestling, to ride well, and to perform every other exercise befitting his situation. To these were to be added urbanity of manners, strict adherence to the truth, and invincible courage. Hunting and hawking skilfully were also acquirements that he was obliged to possess, and which were usually taught him as soon as he was able to endure the fatigue that they required.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. xxiv
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Chivalry

Truth, Beauty, Music, Exercises

“My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one."”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Mes avis sur vos relations avec les femmes sont aussi dans ce mot de chevalerie: Les servir toutes, n'en aimer qu'une.
Le lys dans la vallée (1836), translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, part II: First Love.

Love, Women

“Marriage is like a war. There are moments of chivalry and gallantry that attend the victorious advances and strategic retreats, the birth or death of children, the momentary conquest of loneliness, the sacrifice that ennobles him who makes it. But mostly there are the long dull sieges, the waiting, the terror and boredom. Women understand this better than men; they are better able to survive attrition.”

Helen Hayes (1900–1993) actress

Source: On Reflection (1968), Ch. 12

Death, Women, Men, Marriage

“Don Quixote thought he could have made beautiful bird-cages and toothpicks if his brain had not been so full of ideas of chivalry. Most people would succeed in small things, if they were not troubled with great ambitions.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Table-Talk (1857)

People, Beauty, Idea, Bird

“Chivalry!-why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection-the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant-Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.”

Walter Scott book Ivanhoe

Source: Ivanhoe (1819), Ch. 29, Ivanhoe explains to Rebecca the virtues of chivalry.

“Law represents from age to age the code of the dominant or ruling class, slowly accumulated, no doubt, and slowly modified, but always added to and always administered by the ruling class. Today the code of the dominant class may perhaps best be denoted by the word Respectability—and if we ask why this code has to a great extent overwhelmed the codes of the other classes and got the law on its side (so far that in the main it characterises those classes who do not conform to it as the criminal classes), the answer can only be: Because it is the code of the classes who are in power. Respectability is the code of those who have the wealth and the command, and as these have also the fluent pens and tongues, it is the standard of modern literature and the press. It is not necessarily a better standard than others, but it is the one that happens to be in the ascendant; it is the code of the classes that chiefly represent modern society; it is the code of the Bourgeoisie. It is different from the Feudal code of the past, of the knightly classes, and of Chivalry; it is different from the Democratic code of the future—of brotherhood and of equality; it is the code of the Commercial age and its distinctive watchword is—property.
The Respectability of today is the respectability of property. There is nothing so respectable as being well-off.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)

Age, Law, Literature, Past

“For decades, Saddam Hussein has tortured, imprisoned, raped and murdered the Iraqi people; invaded neighboring countries without provocation; and threatened the world with weapons of mass destruction. The time has come to end his reign of terror. On your young shoulders rest the hopes of mankind. When I give you the word, together we will cross the Line of Departure, close with those forces that choose to fight, and destroy them. Our fight is not with the Iraqi people, nor is it with members of the Iraqi army who choose to surrender. While we will move swiftly and aggressively against those who resist, we will treat all others with decency, demonstrating chivalry and soldierly compassion for people who have endured a lifetime under Saddam’s oppression. Chemical attack, treachery, and use of the innocent as human shields can be expected, as can other unethical tactics. Take it all in stride. Be the hunter, not the hunted: never allow your unit to be caught with its guard down. Use good judgment and act in best interests of our Nation. You are part of the world’s most feared and trusted force. Engage your brain before you engage your weapon. Share your courage with each other as we enter the uncertain terrain north of the Line of Departure. Keep faith in your comrades on your left and right and Marine Air overhead. Fight with a happy heart and strong spirit. For the mission’s sake, our country’s sake, and the sake of the men who carried the Division’s colors in the past battles-who fought for life and never lost their nerve-carry out your mission and keep your honor clean.”

James Mattis (1950) 26th and current United States Secretary of Defense; United States Marine Corps general

Demonstrate to the world there is "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" than a U.S. Marine.
Mattis' words in a message to the 1st Marine Division in March 2003, on the eve of the Iraq War, as quoted in "Eve of Battle Speech" in The Weekly Standard (1 March 2003); also quoted in War Stories: Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003) by Oliver North, p. 53

Life, Men, People, World

“There is another side to chivalry. If it dispenses leniency, it may with equal justification invoke control.”

Freda Adler (1934) Criminologist, educator

Source: Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal (1975), P. 91.

“The knights in [Britain] that were famous for feats of chivalry, wore their clothes and arms all of the same colour and fashion: and the women also no less celebrated for their wit, wore all the same kind of apparel; and esteemed none worthy of their love, but such as had given a proof of their valour in three several battles. Thus was the valour of the men an encouragement for the women's chastity, and the love of the women a spur to the soldier's bravery.”
Quicumque vero famosus probitate miles in eadem erat unius coloris vestibus atque armis utebatur facete etiam mulieres consimilia indumenta habentes. Nullius amorem habere dignabantur nisi tercio in milicia probates esset. Efficiebantur ergo caste et meliores et milites pro amore illarum probiores.

Geoffrey of Monmouth The History of the Kings of Britain

Bk. 9, ch. 13; pp. 244-5.
Sometimes said to be the earliest reference to love as an ennobling influence.
Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain)

Love, Women, Men, Fashion

“Then fail not most carefully to peruse the books of the Greek, Arabian, and Latin physicians, not despising the Talmudists and Cabalists; and by frequent anatomies get thee the perfect knowledge of that other world, called the microcosm, which is man. And at some of the hours of the day apply thy mind to the study of the Holy Scriptures; first, in Greek, the New Testament, with the Epistles of the Apostles;: and then the Old Testament in Hebrew. In brief, let me see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge; for from henceforward, as thou growest great and becomest a man, thou must part from this tranquillity and rest of study, thou must learn chivalry, warfare, and the exercises of the field, the better thereby to defend my house and our friends, and to succour and protect them at all their needs against the invasion and assaults of evildoers.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Pantagruel (1532), Chapter 8.

Books, World, Exercises, Knowledge

“So that battle was fought as you have heard, in the fields of Maupertuis, six miles from the city of Poitiers, on the nineteenth day of September, 1356. It began in the early morning and was finished by mid-afternoon, although many of the English did not return from the pursuit until late evening…There died that day, it was said, the finest flower of French chivalry, whereby the realm of France was sorely weakened and fell into great misery and affliction, as you will hear later.”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Ensi fu ceste bataille desconfite que vous avés oy, qui fu ès camps de Maupetruis à deux liewes de le cité de Poitiers, le vingt unième jour dou mois de septembre, l'an de grasce Nostre Signeur mil trois cens cinquante six. Si commença environ heure de prime, et fu toute passée à none; mès encores n'estoient point tout li Englès qui caciet avoient, retourné de leur cace et remis ensamble…Et fu là morte, si com on recordoit adonc pour le temps, toute li fleur de la chevalerie de France: de quoi li nobles royaumes fu durement afoiblis, et en grant misère et tribulation eschei, ensi que vous orés recorder chi après.
Book 1, pp. 142-3.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Flowers, Affliction

“The romantic notions of chivalry appear to have lost their vigour towards the conclusion of the fifteenth century, especially in this country, where a continued series of intestine commotions employed the exertions of every man of property, and real battles afforded but little leisure to exercise the mockery of war.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. xxviii
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Chivalry

War, Exercises, Appearance, Country

“The unity of the Middle Ages as a historical period is quite artificial. In reality they fall into three entirely distinct cultural periods—the natural economy of the early Middle Ages; the courtly chivalry of the high Middle Ages; and the urban bourgeois culture of the late Middle Ages. At any rate, the divisions between these three epochs go deeper than those which mark the beginning and the end of the Middle Ages as a whole.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter IV. The Middle Ages

Age, Nature, Reality

“In the whole range of human vision, nothing is more attractive than to see a young^ man full of promise and of hope, bending all his energies in the direction of truth and duty and God, his soul pervaded with the loftiest enthusiasm, and his life consecrated to the noblest ends. To be such a young man is to rival the noblest and best of men in heroic valor and Christian chivalry. Nay, to be such a young man is to be like Christ, the highest type, the most illustrious example of enthusiasm the world has ever seen.”

John McClellan Holmes (1834–1911) US Christian minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 208.

Life, Men, God, Truth

“The Church attempted to regulate this rather violent society, and eventually a code of honor evolved known as the code of chivalry. (…) Those who aspired to be knights had to have aristocratic ancestors and wealth enough to own warhorses and armor and to provide for a team of supporters.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Overview: Castles in Context
Medieval castles (2005)

Support, Wealth

“And ruined is the Cossack! He is lost for all the chivalry of the Cossacks! He will see Zaporozhye no more; nor his father's farms, nor the church of God. Ukraine will see no more the bravest of the sons who undertook to defend her. Old Taras will tear the gray hair from his head and curse the day and hour when he begot such a son to shame him.”

Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) Russian writer

"Taras Bulba" (1835)

God, Tear

“"The rules of chivalry, my lord, ensure my protection." "Chivalry? Chivalry? I have heard it mentioned in songs, madame, but this is war. Our task is to punish the followers of Charles of Blois for rebelling against their lawful lord. Punishment and chivalry do not mix."”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

Jeanette, the Countess of Armorica and Sir Simon Jekyll, p. 64
The Grail Quest, The Archer's Tale/Harlequin (2000)

War, Law

“And so it went until the alarm was struck in the famous Missouri debate. Then wise men remembered what Washington had said, 'Resist with care the spirit of innovation upon the principles of the Constitution'. They saw that the letting alone was all on one side, that the unfortunate anomaly was deeply scheming to become the rule, and they roused the country. The old American love of liberty flamed out again. Meetings were everywhere held. The lips of young orators burned with the eloquence of freedom. The spirit of John Knox and of Hugh Peters thundered and lightened in the pulpits, and men were not called political preachers because they preached that we are all equal children of God. The legislatures of the free States instructed their representatives to stand fast for liberty. Daniel Webster, speaking for the merchants of Boston, said that it was a question essentially involving the perpetuity of the blessings of liberty for which the Constitution itself was formed. Daniel Webster, speaking for humanity at Plymouth, described the future of the slave as 'a widespread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death'. The land was loud with the debate, and Rufus King stated its substance in saying that it was a question of slave or free policy in the national government. Slavery hissed disunion; liberty smiled disdain. The moment of final trial came. Pinckney exulted. John Quincy Adams shook his head. Slavery triumphed and, with Southern chivalry, politely called victory compromise.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Love, Death, Men, God

“There is the concealment of truth, which has to be resorted to so as to prevent anything to the credit of the enemy reaching the public. A war correspondent who mentioned some chivalrous act that a German had done to an Englishman during an action received a rebuking telegram from his employer: "Don't want to hear about any good Germans"; and Sir Philip Gibbs, in Realities of War, says: "At the close of the day the Germans acted with chivalry, which I was not allowed to tell at the time."”

Arthur Ponsonby (1871–1946) British Liberal and later Labour politician and pacifist

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction

War, Truth, Reality, Time

“The age of Chivalry has gone. An age of Humanity has come. The Horse, whose importance more than human, have the name to that early period of gallantry and war, now yields his foremost place to Man. In serving him, in promoting his elevation, in contributing to his welfare, in doing him good, there are fields of bloodless triumph, nobler far than any in which Bayard or Du Guesclin conquered.”

Charles Sumner (1811–1874) American abolitionist and politician

Speech on "The Scholar, the Jurist, the Artist, the Philanthropist," oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard University at their anniversary (August 27, 1846)

War, Age, Horse

“The structure of the nobility is changed along with that of the state, but it preserves its continuity with the past intact. Knighthood, on the other hand, as the exclusive warrior-class and upholder of secular culture, decays completely. The process is protracted and the ideals of chivalry do not lose their alluring splendour from one day to the next—least of all in the eyes of the middle classes. But behind the scenes everything is set for the fall of Don Quixote.—The decline of the knighthood has been connected with the new methods of warfare introduced in the late Middle Ages, and it has been pointed out that the heavily accoutred cavalry suffered a severe reverse whenever they met the infantry of the new mercenary armies or the foot of the peasant brigades.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter IV. The Middle Ages

Age, Suffering, Change, Past

“In times of old, as we are told,
When men more child-like at the feet
Of Jesus sat, than now,
A chivalry was known more bold
Than ours, and yet of stricter vow,
Of worship more complete.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), Sub Rosa, Crux

Men, Time

“It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in—glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a Revolution! And what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 331
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Love, Life, Men, Age

“If ambush I must, then ambush I will,” Aillas muttered to himself. “A fig for chivalry, at least until the war is won.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 10, section 3 (p. 518)

War

“So shall he strive, in changeful hue,
Field, feast, and combat, to renew,
And loves, and arms, and harpers' glee,
And all the pomp of chivalry.”

Walter Scott Marmion

Canto V, introduction.
Marmion (1808)

Love, Change

“If the early Chinese people had any chivalry, it was manifested not toward women and children, but toward old people. That feeling of chivalry found clear expression in Mencius in some such saying as, "The people with gray hair should not be seen carrying burdens on the street," which was expressed as the final goal of good government.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 193

Women, Children, People, Feeling

“You can't stop us on the road to freedom
You can't stop us 'cause our eyes can see
Men with insight, men in granite
Knights in armor intent on chivalry.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Tupelo Honey
Song lyrics, Tupelo Honey (1971)

Men, Freedom

“The Spanish voyager, as his caravel ploughed the adjacent seas, might give full scope to his imagination, and dream that beyond the long, low margin of forest which bounded his horizon lay hid a rich harvest for some future conqueror; perhaps a second Mexico with its royal palace and sacred pyramids, or another Cuzco with its temple of the Sun, encircled with a frieze of gold. Haunted by such visions, the ocean chivalry of Spain could not long stand idle.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. I, Ch. 1
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Dreams, Imagination, Sun, Future

“Women, he held, had never been treated with elementary justice. To worship them was no less unfair than to hold them in contempt. The honest man, in our day, should regard a woman without the least bias of sexual prejudice; should view her simply as a fellow-being, who, according to circumstances, might or not be on his own plane. Away with all empty show and form, those relics of barbarism known as chivalry! He wished to discontinue even the habit of hat-doffing in female presence. Was not civility preserved between man and man without such idle form? Why not, then, between man and woman? Unable, as yet, to go the entire length of his principles in every-day life, he endeavoured, at all events, to cultivate in his intercourse with women a frankness of speech, a directness of bearing, beyond the usual. He shook hands as with one of his own sex, spine uncrooked; he greeted them with level voice, not as one who addresses a thing afraid of sound. To a girl or matron whom he liked, he said, in tone if not in phrase, "Let us be comrades." In his opinion this tended notably to the purifying of the social atmosphere. It was the introduction of simple honesty into relations commonly marked — and corrupted — by every form of disingenuousness. Moreover, it was the great first step to that reconstruction of society at large which every thinker saw to be imperative and imminent.
But Constance Bride knew nothing of this, and in her ignorance could not but misinterpret the young man's demeanor. She felt it to be brusque; she imagined it to imply a purposed oblivion of things in the past.”

George Gissing (1857–1903) English novelist

Source: Our Friend the Charlatan (1901), Ch. II

Life, Women, Justice, Sex

“The new, independent women should have no need to exploit a man's vestigial sense of chivalry. If they are truly suited to compete with men, they should be able to do so without special rules, privileges and protections. Men should not have to curb their behavior so that women can achieve. If "equality" were truly desired, men would never have to ask, "Mother, may I?"… To ask men to radically alter their behavior to facilitate the success of complete stranger with whom they may well be in direct or indirect competition is absurd. That's not "equality" any more than asking a boxer to fight with one hand tied behind his back and calling it a "fair fight."”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

And yet this is exactly what feminists ask of men... Men need to reject this.
"Mother May I" Masculinity
A Sky Without Eagles (2014)

Women, Men, Behavior, Sense

“The laws of chivalry required that every knight should pass through two offices: the first was a page; and, at the age of fourteen, he was admitted an esquire. The office of the esquire consisted of several departments; the esquire for the body, the esquire of the chamber, the esquire of the stable, and the carving esquire; the latter stood in the hall at dinner, carved the different dishes, and distributed them to the guests. Several of the inferior officers had also their respective esquires.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. xxv
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Chivalry

Age, Law

“Cusins: Call you poverty a crime?
Undershaft: The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Life, People, Fear, Fools

“Competition with women is almost always a net loss of honor for a man. Men don't consider competition between men and women to be "apples to apples." I don't think women do either… What does a man have to gain? He shows no courage by entering the ring with a woman. He is expected to win. If he does, his victory is shallow and unsavory. He gains no honor in beating a woman- the idea is offensive even to a modern man's vestigial sense of chivalry.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Pg 75
A Sky Without Eagles (2014)

Women, Men, Idea, Courage

“Every ship from the New World came freighted with marvels which put the fictions of chivalry to shame; and to the Spaniard of that day America was a region of wonder and mystery, of vague and magnificent promise. Thither adventurers hastened, thirsting for glory and for gold, and often mingling the enthusiasm of the crusader and the valor of the knight-errant with the bigotry of inquisitors and the rapacity of pirates. They roamed over land and sea; they climbed unknown mountains, surveyed unknown oceans, pierced the sultry intricacies of tropical forests; while from year to year and from day to day new wonders were unfolded, new islands and archipelagoes, new regions of gold and pearl, and barbaric empires of more than Oriental wealth. The extravagance of hope and the fever of adventure knew no bounds.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. I, Ch. 1 Early Spanish Adventure
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

World, Hope, Mountain, Sea

“The art of wrestling, which in the present day is chiefly confined to the lower classes of the people, was, however, highly esteemed by the ancients, and made a very considerable figure among the Olympic games. In the ages of chivalry, to wrestle well was accounted one of the accomplishments which a hero ought to possess. Wrestling is a kind of exercise that, from its nature, is likely to have been practiced by every nation, and especially by those the least civilised. It was probably well known in this country long before the introduction of foreign manners.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 80
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Wrestling

People, Age, Art, Exercises

“Personally,” Scorpio said, “I think it’s time to stop thinking chivalry and start thinking artillery.”

Alastair Reynolds book Absolution Gap

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 19 (p. 272)

Thinking, Time, Personality

“Our books have informed us that the pre-eminence in chivalry and learning once belonged to Greece. Then chivalry passed to Rome, together with that highest learning which now has come to France. God grant that it may be cherished here, and that it may be made so welcome here that the honour which has taken refuge with us may never depart from France: God had awarded it as another's share, but of Greeks and Romans no more is heard, their fame is passed, and their glowing ash is dead.”

Chrétien de Troyes Cligès

At Wikisource, Vv. 1-44
Cliges

God, Books, Learning, Dead

“It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness and chivalry “masculine” when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them, to describe a man's sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as “feminine.””

Clive Staples Lewis book A Grief Observed

A Grief Observed (1961)

“To risk life to save a smile on a face of a woman or a child is the secret of chivalry.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Simplicity http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21390/Simplicity <br class="br">From the poems written in English

Life, Secret, Smile

“If there is one thing more than another better established about the British Constitution it is this, that the Commons, and the Commons alone, have the complete control of supply and ways and means. And what our fathers established through centuries of struggles and of strife, even of bloodshed, we are not going to be traitors to. Who talks about altering and meddling with the Constitution? The Constitutional Party…As long as the Constitution gave rank and possession and power it was not to be interfered with. As long as it secured even their sports from intrusion, and made interference with them a crime; as long as the Constitution forced royalties and ground-rents and fees, premiums and fines, the black retinue of extraction; as long as it showered writs, and summonses, and injunctions, and distresses, and warrants to enforce them, then the Constitution was inviolate, it was sacred, it was something that was put in the same category as religion, that no man ought to touch, and something that the chivalry of the nation ought to range in defence of. But the moment the Constitution looks round, the moment the Constitution begins to discover that there are millions of people outside the park gates who need attention, then the Constitution is to be torn to pieces. Let them realize what they are doing. They are forcing revolution.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in The Times (11 October 1909), p. 6
Chancellor of the Exchequer

People, Religion, Way, Sport

“Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyberborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Phoenix on the Sword" (1932)

Women, Age, World, Dreams

“The earth is our mother, our habitation, and our tomb. In the presence of these facts, it would seem the highest sanity for us to be kind and merciful to each other, and to cultivate without hypocrisy the charming chivalry of the Golden Rule. The task of understanding and managing the tendencies which surround and beat upon us and in the midst of which we writhe and supplicate is certainly sufficient in itself without our turning upon and cudgeling each other.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Ideal, pp. 159–160

Understanding

“The man momentarily stands for the thought, but will not bear examination; and a society of men will cursorily represent well enough a certain quality and culture, for example, chivalry or beauty of manners, but separate them, and there is no gentleman and no lady in the group. The least hint sets us on the pursuit of a character, which no man realizes.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nominalist and Realist

Beauty, Men

“The rules of chivalry, my lord, ensure my protection.”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

<br/k> "Chivalry? Chivalry? I have heard it mentioned in songs, madame, but this is war. Our task is to punish the followers of Charles of Blois for rebelling against their lawful lord. Punishment and chivalry do not mix."
Jeanette, the Countess of Armorica and Sir Simon Jekyll, p. 64
The Grail Quest, The Archer's Tale/Harlequin (2000)

“Respect for woman, the much lauded chivalry of the Middle Ages, meant what I fear it still means to some men in our own day—respect for the elect few among whom they expect to consort.”

Anna J. Cooper (1858–1964) African-American author, educator, speaker and scholar

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 14

Fear, Age, Men