King Arthur and His Knights Quotes

“For to die with honour is far better than to live disgraced.”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“Then was the monument called "Stonehenge," which stands, as all men know, upon the plain of Salisbury to this very day.”
― Knowles James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“Sir Lancelot increased in fame and worship above all men, for he overthrew all comers, and never was unhorsed or worsted, save by treason and enchantment.”
― James Knowles, The Legend of King Arthur and His Knights

“for what cause he was thus dragged there? "My magicians," answered Vortigern, "told me to seek out a man that had no human father, and to sprinkle my castle with his blood, that it may stand." "Order those magicians," said Merlin, "to come before me, and I will convict them of a lie." The king was astonished at his words, but commanded the magicians to come and sit down before Merlin, who cried to them-- "Because ye know not what it is that hinders the foundation of the castle, ye have advised my blood for a cement to it, as if that would avail; but tell me now rather what there is below that ground, for something there is surely underneath that will not suffer the tower to stand?”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“Filled with mixed rage and fear, the king called for the astrologers and wizards, and took counsel with them what these things might be, and how to overcome them. The wizards worked their spells and incantations, and in the end declared that nothing but the blood of a youth born without mortal father, smeared on the foundations of the castle, could”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“woful”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“I pray, Lord, that workmen may be ordered”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“How is it possible to remove such vast stones from so great a distance, as if Britain, also, had no stones fit for the work?”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“for love cometh of the heart and not by constraint.” “That is true,” said the king; “for love is free.”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“for it is better that we slay a coward than through a coward be all slain.”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“scenes from the Legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table many lovely pictures have been painted, showing much diversity of figures and surroundings, some being definitely sixth-century British or Saxon, as in Blair Leighton’s fine painting of the dead Elaine; others—for example, Watts’ Sir Galahad—show knight and charger in fifteenth-century armour; while the warriors of Burne Jones wear strangely impracticable armour of some mystic period. Each of these painters was free to follow his own conception, putting the figures into whatever period most appealed to his imagination; for he was not illustrating the actual tales written by Sir Thomas Malory, otherwise he would have found himself face to face with a difficulty. King Arthur and his knights fought, endured, and toiled in the sixth century, when the Saxons were overrunning Britain; but their achievements were not chronicled by Sir Thomas Malory until late in the fifteenth century. Sir Thomas, as Froissart has done before him, described the habits of life, the dresses, weapons, and armour that his own eyes looked upon in the every-day scenes about him, regardless of the fact that almost every detail mentioned was something like a thousand years too late. Had Malory undertaken an account of the landing of Julius Caesar he would, as a matter of course, have protected the Roman legions with bascinet or salade, breastplate, pauldron and palette, coudiére, taces and the rest, and have armed them with lance and shield, jewel-hilted sword and slim misericorde; while the Emperor himself might have been given the very suit of armour stripped from the Duke of Clarence before his fateful encounter with the butt of malmsey. Did not even Shakespeare calmly give cannon to the Romans and suppose every continental city to lie majestically beside the sea? By the old writers, accuracy in these matters was disregarded, and anachronisms were not so much tolerated as unperceived. In illustrating this edition of “The Legends of King Arthur and his Knights,” it has seemed best, and indeed unavoidable if the text and the pictures are to tally, to draw what Malory describes, to place the fashion”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“Damsel, wherefore art thou girt with that sword, for it beseemeth thee not?”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“Then all the host of craftsmen, fearing for their lives, found out a proper site whereon to build the tower, and eagerly began to lay in the foundations.”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“envy and jealousy because he”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“Arise, Lord King, for the enemy is come; even Ambrosius and Uther, upon whose throne thou sittest—and full twenty thousand with them—and they have sworn by a great oath, Lord, to slay thee, ere this year be done; and even now they march towards thee as the north wind of winter for bitterness and haste.”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“ing Vortigern the usurper sat upon his throne in London, when, suddenly, upon a certain day, ran in a breathless messenger, and cried aloud— “Arise, Lord King, for the enemy”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“knights.” Prianius was christened, and made a duke and knight of the Round Table. So Prianius”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

“evensong”
― James Knowles, The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights