"Decameron" Quotes from Famous Books
... masterpiece. Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain's biographer, likewise acknowledged its greatness, when he said, "1601 is a genuine classic, as classics of that sort go. It is better than the gross obscenities of Rabelais, and perhaps in some day to come, the taste that justified Gargantua and the Decameron will give this literary refugee shelter and setting among the more conventional writing of Mark Twain. Human taste is a curious thing; delicacy is purely a matter of ... — Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the court a flight of steps fully fifty feet wide—massy, mossed, and magnificently balustraded—leads to a walled terrace. The scene makes one think of the approach to some Italian pleasure-garden of Decameron days. But, reaching the terrace, you find only a gate, opening—into a cemetery! Did the Buddhist landscape-gardener wish to tell us that all pomp and power and beauty lead only to such silence ... — Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... Cristofano, called Buffalmacco, painter of Florence, who was a pupil of Andrea Tafi, celebrated for his jests by M. Giovanni Boccaccio in his "Decameron," is well known to have been the close companion of Bruno and Calandrino, painters, and themselves facetious and pleasant men. He possessed a very fair judgment in the art of painting, as may be seen by his works, which ... — The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... Gil Blas. Pilgrim's Progress. Tale of a Tub. Gulliver. Vicar of Wakefield. Robinson Crusoe. Arabian Nights. Decameron. Wilhelm Meister. Vathek. Corinne. Minister's Wooing. Undine. Sintram. Thisdolf. Peter Schlemihl. Sense and Sensibility. Pride and Prejudice. Anastasius. Amber Witch. Mary Powell. Household of Sir T. More. Cruise of ... — How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... headed "Saint Satyre" is prefaced by a beautiful hymn from the "Breviarum Romanum"; while the story named "Guido Cavalcanti" begins with a long quotation from "Il Decameron di Messer Giovanni Boccaccio." I take the first instance that comes to my hand; but all his books are the same. And one who reads Anatole France for the sake of an exciting narrative, or for the sake of illuminating psychology, or for the sake ... — Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... court. Chaucer took the substance of "Troilus and Creseyde" and "The Knightes Tale" from Boccaccio's "Filostrato" and "Teseide"; and Dryden, who never mentions Dante, versified three stories from the "Decameron." But Petrarch and Boccaccio were not mediaeval minds. They represent the earlier stages of humanism and the new learning. Dante was the genuine homme du moyen age, and Dante was the latest of the great revivals. "Dante," says Carlyle, "was the spokesman ... — A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... said that Chaucer borrowed the form of his famous tales from a book called The Decameron, written by an Italian poet named Boccaccio. Decameron comes from two Greek words deka, ten, and hemera, a day, the book being so called because the stories in it were supposed to be told in ten ... — English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... favourite exercise of the wits of Italy, and had sought gratification in the numerous collections of novelle, which were brought forth by the genius of that elegant though luxurious nation, in emulation of the 'Decameron.' In classical literature, Waverley had made the usual progress, and read the usual authors; and the French had afforded him an almost exhaustless collection of memoirs, scarcely more faithful than romances, and of romances ... — Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... love is mine, Blending the human and divine, A tale of the Decameron, told In Palmieri's ... — Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... foolish thing in another. Meantime, why should we not make the best of the pleasant surroundings with which Nature provides us here—green turf, sparkling water, good sport, and how bright a day! Could we be more favoured by Fortune, slippery dame that she is? It is an Australian Decameron without the ... — Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... and if his original expenditure were placed by the side of the total which his collection of books brought after his death, no more convincing arguments in favour of book-hunting could possibly be needed. Bindley is the 'Leontes' of Dibdin's 'Bibliographical Decameron,' and his collection of poetical rarities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was one of the most remarkable which had ever been got together. Not many of the items had cost him more than a few shillings each, and they ... — The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... narrow streets, the organ-roll of Dante's verse, the crackle of the fagots around Arnold of Brescia, the twitter of the swallows to which St. Francis preached, the laughter of the ladies listening on the hillside to the quips of the Decameron, while plague-struck Florence howled beneath them—all this and much more I heard, joined in strange unison with voices earlier and more remote, fierce, passionate, or tender, yet subdued to such awful harmony ... — The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... pleasant to read how the wits and beauties of the time of Queen Anne used to meet together in delightful garden-retreats, 'like the companies in Boccaccio's Decameron or in one of Watteau's pictures.' Ritchings Lodge, for instance, the seat of Lord Bathurst, was visited by most of the celebrities of England, and frequently exhibited bright groups of the polite and accomplished ... — Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... traffic which, of course, found no defenders—but Comstock had so drawn them that their actual sweep was vastly wider, and once he was firmly in the saddle his enterprises scarcely knew limits. Having disposed of "The Confessions of Maria Monk" and "Night Life in Paris," he turned to Rabelais and the Decameron, and having driven these ancients under the book-counters, he pounced upon Zola, Balzac and Daudet, and having disposed of these too, he began a pogrom which, in other hands, eventually brought down such astounding victims as Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure" and Harold Frederic's ... — A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... marked the decline of Greek and Roman civilization, to the appearance of the Divine Comedy. The Count Lucanor, a work of the fourteenth century, was one of the earliest prose writings in the Spanish tongue, as the Decameron, which was written about the same time, was the first in Italian. Both are narrative tales; but their moral tone is very dissimilar—the Decameron was written to amuse, while the Count Lucanor is addressed to a grave ... — The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... proportions of mankind. Have we not sometimes also lessened their grandeur and altered their purity? If Corneille has undoubtedly brought nearer to us the still somewhat barbaric heroes of Guillem de Castro, La Fontaine, when imitating the author of the Decameron, has made him more indecent than he is in his own language; and if the Italians have no right to assail Moliere for borrowing somewhat from them, the English may well complain that Voltaire failed to understand Shakespeare. But it is true none the less that in disengaging from the particular man ... — Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... left here and there in modern literature. "The fame of the brilliant court of Athens," he says, "resounded through the west of Europe, and many a chapter of old romance is filled with gorgeous pictures of its splendors. One of the heroines of Boccacio's Decameron, in the course of her adventurous life, is found at Athens, inspiring the duke by her charms. Dan'te was a contemporary of Guy II. and Walter de Brienne; and in his Divina Commedia he applies to Theseus, ... — Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... two centuries. Once many English writers, many of them now deservedly obscure, published prose and poetry that would now be criminal. An unexpurgated edition of Shakespeare's "Complete Works," or of Boccaccio's "Decameron," could not be circulated through the United States mails, and there are many good people who are asking how long we shall continue to allow the unexpurgated "Old Testament" the privilege of circulation. It is ... — Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... disconnectedness of the parts increase. The whole is held together by a "frame"; a device which has passed into the epic of Ariosto ('Orlando Furioso,' xxviii.), and which is not unlike that used by Boccaccio ('Decameron') and Chaucer ('Canterbury Tales'). This "frame" is, in short:—A certain king of India, Shahriyar, aroused by his wife's infidelity, determines to make an end of all the women in his kingdom. As often as ... — Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... was an afterthought. He had begun by offering his version of it for publication in this volume. His objection to Horne's treatment of the Reve's Tale was reasonable enough. The original tale was the sixth novel in the ninth day of the Decameron, and probably was taken by Chaucer from a Fabliau by Jean de Boves, "De Gombert et des Deux Clercs." The same story has been imitated in the "Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," and in the "Berceau" of La Fontaine. Horne's removal from the tale of everything that would offend a modern reader was designed ... — Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... afterwards deserted. So much as this Boccaccio has himself told us, under a transparent veil of allegory, in his Ameto. Of his mother we would fain know more, for his wit has in it a quality, especially noticeable in the Tenth Novel of the Sixth Day of the Decameron, which marks him out as the forerunner of Rabelais, and prompts us to ask how much more his genius may have owed to his French ancestry. His father was of sufficient standing in Florence to be chosen Prior in 1321; but this brief term of office—but two months—was his last, ... — The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio |