Whatever Epic may mean, it implies some weight and solidity; Romance means nothing, if it does not convey some notion of mystery a...nd fantasy. A general distinction of this kind, whatever names may be used to render it, can be shown, in medieval literature, to hold good of the two large groups of narrative belonging to the earlier and the later Middle Ages respectively. Beowulf might stand for the one side. Lancelot or Gawain for the other. It is a difference not confined to literature. The two groups are distinguished from one another, as the respectable piratical gentleman of the North Sea coast in the ninth or tenth century differs from one of the companions of Saint Louis. The latter has something fantastic in his ideas which the other has not. The Crusader may indeed be natural and brutal enough in most of his ways, but he has lost the sobriety and simplicity of the earlier type of rover.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Her little loose hands, and dropping Victorian shoulders. And then her great weight below the waist, her vast pale belly ...>With a thin young yellow little paw hanging out, and straggle of a long thin ear, like ribbon, Like a funny trimming to the middle of her belly, thin little dangle of an immature paw, and one thin ear.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The blood of Abraham, God's father of the chosen, still flows in the veins of Arab, Jew, and Christian, and too much of it has bee...n spilled in grasping for the inheritance of the revered patriarch in the Middle East. The spilled blood in the Holy Land still cries out to God--an anguished cry for peace.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know that I will always be expected to have extra insight into black texts--especially texts by black women. A working-class Jew...ish woman from Brooklyn could become an expert on Shakespeare or Baudelaire, my students seemed to believe, if she mastered the language, the texts, and the critical literature. But they would not grant that a middle-class white man could ever be a trusted authority on Toni Morrison.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves "oppressed," no one would have taken them serio...usly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
During medieval times, all those emotions were missing which have made us cautious and tentative in matters of justice: the insigh...t into diminished capacity, the concept of judicial fallibility, the awareness that society has to share in the blame for the guilt of individuals, the question whether an individual ought not be rehabilitated rather than made to suffer. Or, perhaps, better stated: a vague sense of all this is not lacking, but rather concentrates itself, unverbalized, in instant impulses of charity and forgiveness, unconcerned with the issue of guilt, which could suddenly break through the cruel satisfaction over the administration of justice. While we administer a hesitant, toned down justice, partially filled with a guilty conscience, the Middle Ages knew only two extremes: the full measure of cruel punishment or mercy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You shall have only a full and honest weight; you shall have only a full and honest measure, so that your days may be long in the ...land that the LORD your God is giving you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »