“The Faerie Queene was intended by its author to be a philosophical poem and was so regarded by his contemporaries and immediate successors, whose appreciation of it was so great.”

“The aim I have set before me in this book is to give back to English readers the understanding of and delight in this great poet which thrilled his contemporaries and early successors.”

“All of those faeries and duels and mad queens and so on, and no one quoted old Billy Shakespeare. Not even once.”

“The great words never die... and so does the soul of its author.”

“Considering that Timur had ignored every instrument of government except terror, it is remarkable his immediate successors managed to retain control of most of his empire.”

“Not the criticism of individual contemporaries will decide the truth or falsity of these discoveries, but future generations. There are things that are not yet true today, perhaps we dare not find them true, but tomorrow they may be. So every man whose fate it is to go his individual way must proceed with hopefulness and watchfulness, ever conscious of his loneliness and its dangers.”