C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Romance

Romances, in general are calculated rather to fire the imagination than to inform the judgment.

Richardson.

Romance is the poetry of literature.

Mme. Necker.

In the meanest hut is a romance, if you knew the hearts there.

Varnhagen von Ense.

Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.

Disraeli.

There will always be romance in the world so long as there are young hearts in it.

Bovee.

A tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner.

Sir P. Sidney.

The twilight that surrounds the border-land of old romance.

Longfellow.

In this commonplace world every one is said to be romantic who either admires a fine thing or does one.

Pope.

Romances paint at full length people’s wooings,
But only give a bust of marriages:
For no one cares for matrimonial cooings,
There’s nothing wrong in a connubial kiss.
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?

Byron.

Imagination, whatever may be said to the contrary, will always hold a place in history, as truth does in romance. Has not romance been penned with history in view?

Arsène Houssaye.

What philosopher of the schoolroom, with the mental dowry of four summers, ever questions the power of the wand that opened the dark eyes of the beautiful princess, or subtracts a single inch from the stride of seven leagues?

Willmott.

I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible.

Burke.

Romance is always young.

Whittier.

Parent of golden dreams, Romance!

Byron.

He loved the twilight that surrounds
The border-land of old romance;
Where glitter hauberk, helm, and lance,
And banner waves, and trumpet sounds,
And ladies ride with hawk on wrist,
And mighty warriors sweep along,
Magnified by the purple mist,
The dusk of centuries and of song.

Longfellow.

Romance is the truth of imagination and boyhood. Homer’s horses clear the world at a bound. The child’s eye needs no horizon to its prospect. The oriental tale is not too vast. Pearls dropping from trees are only falling leaves in autumn. The palace that grew up in a night merely awakens a wish to live in it. The impossibilities of fifty years are the commonplaces of five.

Willmott.

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