The Portable Medieval Reader Quotes

“But...Bernard of Chartres...said...'We are like dwarfs seated on the shoulders of giants; we see more things than the ancients and things more distant, but this is due neither to the sharpness of our own sight nor the greatness of our own stature, but because we are raised and borne aloft on that giant mass.”
― James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin, The Portable Medieval Reader

“Come now, brother, what is this body which you clothe with such diligent care and nourish gently as if it were royal offspring? Is it not a mass of putrefaction, is it not worms, dust, and ashes? It is fit that the wise man consider not this which now is, but rather what it will be afterwards in the future, pus, slime, decay, and the filth of obscene corruption.”
― James Bruce Ross, The Portable Medieval Reader

“This indeed is then done, when the itching palate is repressed, when the bold tongue is restrained in silence, when the ear is closed to evil speaking, when the eye is forbidden to look at illicit things, when the hand is restrained lest it strike cruelly, the foot lest it go off wandering idly; when the heart is resisted lest it envy the good fortune of another’s happiness, lest it desire through avarice that which is not its own, lest it cut itself off by wrath from fraternal love, lest it arrogantly praise itself above others, lest it yield to seductive luxury through pleasure, lest it sink immoderately into grief, or in joy open the way to the tempter.”
― James Bruce Ross, The Portable Medieval Reader