"Elizabethan age" Quotes from Famous Books
... There reigned in the mass of the nation that inveterate inaccessibility to ideas, that Philistinism,—to use the German nickname,—which reacts even on the individual genius that is exempt from it. In our greatest literary epoch, that of the Elizabethan age,[154] English society at large was accessible to ideas, was permeated by them, was vivified by them, to a degree which has never been reached in England since. Hence the unique greatness in English ... — Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the land, and were incorporated with the very being of the nation. Then, as the mist of doubt and persecution which had covered Mary's throne cleared away, the intellect of England, in all its health, and vigour, and symmetry, stood revealed in the men and women of the Elizabethan age:— ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... was for the writers of the Elizabethan age, and even in his time he found that this taste had become old-fashioned. He complained, when only twenty-one years old, in a letter to Coleridge, that all his friends "read nothing but reviews and new books." His letters, like his essays, reflect the reading of little-known books; they ... — Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... say the same of the Southampton, though it stands on classic ground, and is connected by vocal tradition with the great names of the Elizabethan age. What a falling off is here I Our ancestors of that period seem not only to be older by two hundred years, and proportionably wiser and wittier than we, but hardly a trace of them is left, not even the memory of what has been. How should I make my friend ... — Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... full of great purpose and noble aims, working out in very truth their own salvation. It is when one comes to think of this, that one first realizes the immeasurable thanks due to the heroes, known and unknown, of the Elizabethan age. Whether they stand high on the scroll of fame or lie forgotten in some quiet graveyard or in the vast oceans which they crossed, it was they, and they only, who laid the great foundations of the England and the United ... — In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher |