Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Romance
Parent of golden dreams, Romance!
Auspicious queen of childish joys,
Who lead’st along, in airy dance,
Thy votive train of girls and boys.
Byron—To Romance.
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—Don Juan. Canto III. St. 8.
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—Prelude to Tales of a Wayside Inn. Pt. V. L. 130.
Romance is the poetry of literature.
Madame Necker.
Lady of the Mere,
Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.
Wordsworth—A Narrow Girdle of Rough Stones and Crags.