October 19, 2007 - 0 Comments

"His features might have been called good, had there not lurked under the pent-house of his eye, that sly epicurean twinkle which indicates the cautious voluptuary."

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"Wamba whispered to Gurth, 'If this be the habitation of a thief, it makes good the old proverb, The nearer the church the farther from God.'"

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'"Holy Mother," said the monk, as he addressed the assembled knights, "I am at last safe and in Christian keeping!"

"Safe thou art," replied De Bracy; "and for Christianity, here is the stout Baron Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, whose utter abomination is a Jew; and the good Knight Templar, Brian de Bois-Guilbert, whose trade is to slay Saracens—-If these are not good marks of Christianity, I know no other which they bear about them."

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"'I forgive you, Sir Knight,' said Rowena, 'as a Christian.'
'That means,' said Wamba, 'that she does not forgive him at all.'"

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"Say not my art is fraud - all live by seeming .
The beggar begs with it, and the gay courtier
Gains land and title, rank and rule, by seeming;
The clergy scorn it not, and the bold soldier
Will eke with it his service.--All admit it,
All practise it; adn he who is content
With shewing what he is, shall have small credit
In church, or camp, or state--So wags the world.
-- Old Play"

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"Why,' said Wamba, 'an valour be so dull, you will please to learn, that those honest fellows balance a good deed with one not quite so laudable; as a crown given to a begging friar with an hundred byzants taken from a fat abbot, or a wench kissed in the greenwood with the relief of a poor widow.'
'Which of these was the good deed, which was the felony?' interrupted the Knight.
'A good gibe! A good Gibe!'"

-- Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, 1854.