Chivalry  

"THE ages, we call barbarous, present us with many a subject of curious speculation. What, for instance, is more remarkable than the Gothic Chivalry? or than the spirit of Romance, which took its rise from that singular institution? Nothing in human nature, my dear friend, is without its reasons. The modes and fashions of different times may appear, at first sight, fantastic and unaccountable. But they, who look nearly into them, discover some latent cause of their production."--Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762) by Richard Hurd

“If I do not complain of the pain," says Don Quixote, after the disastrous chance of the windmills, “it is because a knight-errant must never complain of his wounds, though his bowels were dropping out through them."--The History of Chivalry (1826) by Charles Mills

“If I do not complain of the pain," says Don Quixote, after the disastrous chance of the windmills, “it is because a knight-errant must never complain of his wounds, though his bowels were dropping out through them."--The History of Chivalry (1826) by Charles Mills

"The memory of these devastations, for Abderame did not spare the country or the people, was long preserved by tradition; and the invasion of France by the Moors or Mahometans affords the ground-work of those fables which have been so wildly disfigured in the romances of chivalry and so elegantly adorned by the Italian muse."--The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-89) by Edward Gibbon

"There is no doubt that a hero must be brave and kind; therefore, in a story he must have occasion to exercise his chivalry, and the most picturesque way of doing so is in the service of the heroine. Hence it is necessary that there should be a damsel in distress."--Short Studies in Character (1894) by Sophie Bryant