"Decameron" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 realized almost as many pounds as he had paid shillings. Perry was ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... ages; and holds that they were mostly fronds of the palm Raphia vinifera, which has the largest leaf in the vegetable kingdom and which the Moslems of Zanzibar call "Satan's date-tree." I need hardly quote "Frate Cipolla and the Angel Gabriel's Feather." (Decameron ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... themselves, to listen to the reading of the play, on the sloping bank, covered with verdure already dense, although made up of slender plants, and the pretty attentive faces, the skirts spread out upon the grass made one think of a more innocent and chaste Decameron in a reposeful atmosphere. To complete the picture of nature at its loveliest, the distant rustic landscape, two windmills could be seen through an opening between the branches, turning in the direction of Suresnes, while, of the dazzling gorgeous vision to be seen ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of King Robert of Naples, and the lady, whom he made famous under the name of Fiammetta, seems to have loved him in return. It was for her amusement, and for the amusement of the Queen of Naples, that he composed many of the stories in "The Decameron." He returned to Florence in 1350, after the great plague, which he has described in so vivid a manner in the opening chapter of his great work, had abated; and three years afterwards he published "The Decameron," the title being derived from the Greek words signifying "ten ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... Nothing can phase you, you've such a facility; Nobody ever yet found your utility— There is the charm of you, Barney McGee; Under conditions that others would stammer in, Still unperturbed as a cat or a Cameron, Polished as somebody in the Decameron, Putting the glamour on price or Pawnee. In your meanderin', Love and philanderin', Calm as a mandarin Sipping his tea! Under the art of you, Parcel and part of you, Here's to the heart of you, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... highway, Vivian Bell talked with her usual transcendentalism. As they were descending among houses pink and white, gardens and terraces ornamented with statues and fountains, she showed to her friend the villa, hidden under bluish pines, where the ladies and the cavaliers of the Decameron took refuge from the plague that ravaged Florence, and diverted one another with tales frivolous, facetious, or tragic. Then she confessed the thought which had come ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... dowered her. There was too much joy of the south in Monticelli's bones to concern himself with the cruel imaginings of the Orient or the grisly visions of the north. He was Oriental au fond; but it was the Orientalism of the Thousand and One Nights. He painted scenes from the Decameron, and his fetes galantes may be matched with Watteau's in tone. His first period was his most graceful; ivory-toned languorous dames, garbed in Second Empire style, languidly stroll in charming parks escorted by fluttering Cupids or stately cavaliers. The ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... melody.' I heard a tale that was not told In those ten dreamy days of old, When Heaven, for some divine offence, Smote Florence with the pestilence; And in that garden's odorous shade, The dames of the Decameron, With each a loyal lover, strayed, To laugh and sing, at sorest need, To lie in the lilies in the sun With glint of plume and silver brede! And while she whispered in my ear, The pleasant Arno murmured near, The dewy, slim chameleons run Through twenty colors in the sun; The breezes broke ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... sojourn at Paris, and 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 ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... 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 naughty stories.' ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... 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 ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... 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 ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... mention that Maara el nooman, Schisur, and Harem in some unaccountable manner remained free. The shores of the Mediterranean were ravaged and ships were seen on the high seas without sailors. In "The Decameron" Boccaccio gives a most graphic description of the plague and states that in Florence, in four months, 100,000 perished; before the calamity it was hardly supposed to contain so many inhabitants. According to Hecker, Venice lost ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... day of the Decameron, beginneth the fifth, in which under the rule of Fiammetta discourse is had of good fortune befalling lovers after divers direful or disastrous ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... themselves on romantic fiction,—of all themes the most fascinating to a youthful imagination, before the passions have roused themselves, and demand poetry of a more sentimental description." I need not repeat his enumeration of other favorites, Pulci, the {p.115} Decameron, Froissart, Brantome, Delanoue, and the chivalrous and romantic lore of Spain. I have quoted a passage so well known, only for the sake of the striking circumstance by which it marks the very early date ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... from which issue two clasped hands is the device of Guizot Marchand or Guido Mercator, printer, in 1498. He lived at the College of Navarre."—Dibdin's "Decameron," ii. pp. 33-36. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford |
