""Much depends," says Charles Lamb, "upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy Queen for a stop-gap?" Select rather a June morning, when the brilliant white clouds are sailing slowly through a blue sky, a grassy bank under a tree, looking down a long valley with broken hills in the distance; let mind and body both be at ease, and both disposed to dream, but not to sleep, and when the influences of nature have had their due effect, open, if you please, at the middle of the Legend of Sir Guyon."

"No man can read the "Faery Queen" and be anything but the better for it. Through that rude age, when maids of honor drank beer for breakfast and Hamlet could say a gross thing to Ophelia, he passes serenely abstracted and high, the Don Quixote of poets. Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in the "Faery Queen." There is the land of pure heart's ease, where no ache or sorrow of spirit can enter."

"I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say 'at last,' I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he hoped to do so much have I enjoyed it."

"[Mr. John Bailey] related a story of an officer who read the Faerie Queene to his men when they were in a particularly difficult situation. The men did not understand the words, but the poetry had a soothing influence upon them. Nothing better could be said of poetry than that."

"Who, except scholars, and except the eccentric few who are born with a sympathy for such work, or others who have deliberately studied themselves into the right appreciation, can now read through the whole of The Faerie Queene with delight?"

"I am reading The Faery Queen—with delight. [...] I can't think out what I mean about conception: the idea behind F.Q. How to express a kind of natural transition from state to state. And the air of natural beauty."

"The things we read about in [The Faerie Queene] are not like life, but the experience of reading it is like living."

"Beyond all doubt it is best to have made one's first acquaintance with Spenser in a very large—and, preferably, illustrated—edition of The Faerie Queene, on a wet day, between the ages of twelve and sixteen."

"It is not, perhaps, absolutely necessary to have a large edition in fact; but it is imperative that you should think of The Faerie Queene as a book suitable for reading in a heavy volume, at a table—a book to which limp leather is insulting—a massy, antique story with a blackletter flavour about it—a book for devout, prolonged, and leisurely perusal."

"The Faery Queen, it is said, has never been read to the end."

"The first essential is, of course, not to read The Faery Queen."

"I never meet a man who says that he used to like the Faerie Queene."

"From the time of its publication down to about 1914 it was everyone's poem—the book in which many and many a boy first discovered that he liked poetry; a book which spoke at once, like Homer or Shakespeare or Dickens, to every reader's imagination. Spenser did not rank as a hard poet like Pindar, Donne, or Browning. How we have lost that approach I do not know. And unfortunately The Faerie Queene suffers even more than most great works from being approached through the medium of commentaries and "literary history." These all demand from us a sophisticated, self-conscious frame of mind. But then, when we have used all these aids, we discover that the poem itself demands exactly the opposite response. Its primary appeal is to the most naïve and innocent tastes: to that level of our consciousness which is divided only by the thinnest veil from the immemorial lights and glooms of the collective Unconscious itself. It demands of us a child's love of marvels and dread of bogies, a boy's thirst for adventures, a young man's passion for physical beauty. If you have lost or cannot re-arouse these attitudes, all the commentaries, all your scholarship about "the Renaissance" or "Platonism" or Elizabeth's Irish policy, will not avail. The poem is a great palace, the door into it is so low that a Spenserian you must stoop to go in. No prig can be a fairy-tale. But it is unless we can enjoy it as a fairy-tale first of all, we shall not really care for it."

"The Faerie Queene is perhaps the most difficult poem in English. Quite how difficult, I am only now beginning to realize after forty years of reading it."

"Adverse criticism of the stories in The Faerie Queene is usually based on a false expectation. Both the complaints against "faceless knights" and those against "characters with no insides" come alike from readers who are looking for a novelistic-like interest. But it is quite wrong to approach the poem with this demand; for Spenser never meant to supply it. Occasionally, of course, he makes a very brief approach to the kind of fiction now valued in the novel. [...] We should never concentrate, however, on passages such as these. It is always a great mistake to value a work of one kind for its occasional slight approximations to some other kind which happens to be preferred. If we can't learn to like a work of art for what it is, we had best give it up. There is no point in trying to twist it or force it into a form it was never meant to have. And certainly to read The Faerie Queene as a novel is perverse and unrewarding enough. It is like going to a Mozart opera just for the spoken bits."

"The Faerie Queene is the most extended and extensive meditation on sex in the history of poetry."

"There has been and continue to be controversy about the nature and status of to be sex in The Faerie Queene. Most criticism assumes that what Spenser says is what he means. But a poet may not always be master of his own poem, for imagination can overwhelms moral intention. Some of the poetically strongest and most fully realized material in The Faerie Queene is pornographic. Like Blake's Milton, Spenser may be one of the devil's party without knowing it. In a paradox cherished by Sade and Baudelaire, the presence of moral sexual law and taboo intensifies the luxury of evil. A great poet always has profound ambivalences and obscurities whose motivation criticism has scarcely begun to study in this case. The Faerie Queene is didactic but also self-pleasuring. Not despite the complexity of erotic response, Spenser was a sexual psychologist of the first rank, surpassed only by Freud and Shakespeare. His treatment of erotic archetype, and perversion, dream, civilization, fantasy, obsession, and sacrifice lifts The Faerie Queene out of national into world literature."

"The Faerie Queene (1st ed., 1590; 2nd ed., 1596; 3rd ed., 1609)"

"Spenser's Faerie Queene. A New Edition with a Glossary, And Notes explanatory and critical, ed. John Upton, Vols. I–II (London: Printed for J. and R. Tonson, 1758)"

"Spenser and his Poetry, by George Lillie Craik, Vols. I–III (London: Charles Knight & Co., 1845)"

"The Canterbury Tales and Faerie Queene, with other poems of Chaucer and Spenser, edited for popular perusal, with current illustrative and explanatory notes, by D. Laing Purves (Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo, 1874)"

"A Complete Dictionary of Poetical Quotations, ed. Sarah Josepha Hale (Philadelphia: E. Claxton & Co., 1881)"

"Familiar Quotations, ed. John Bartlett, 9th ed. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1895)"

"The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations, ed. Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, a new edition, revised, corrected and enlarged (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1896)"

"A Popular Manual of English Literature, by Maude Gillette Phillips, Vol. I (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1897)"

"The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, ed. Elizabeth M. Knowles, 5th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)"

"Death is an equall doome To good and bad, the commen In of rest."

"And all within were pathes and alleies wide, With footing worne, and leading inward farr."

"And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led, Ioying to heare the birdes sweete harmony, Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred, Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky. Much can they praise the trees so straight and hy, The sayling Pine, the Cedar proud and tall, The vine-propp Elme, the Poplar neuer dry, The builder Oake, sole king of forrests all, The Aspine good for staues, the Cypresse funerall.'The Laurell, meed of mightie Conquerours And Poets sage, the Firre that weepeth still, The Willow worne of forlorne Paramours, The Eugh obedient to the benders will, The Birch for shaftes, the Sallow for the mill, The Mirrhe sweete bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike Beech, the Ash for nothing ill, The fruitfull Oliue, and the Platane round, The caruer Holme, the Maple seeldom inward sound."

"Oft fire is without smoke, And perill without show."

"Vertue giues her selfe light, through darkenesse for to wade."

"His glistring armor made A litle glooming light, much like a shade."

"God helpe the man so wrapt in Errours endlesse traine."

"Add faith vnto your force, and be not faint: Strangle her, els she sure will strangle thee."

"For what so strong, But wanting rest will also want of might? The Sunne that measures heauen all day long, At night doth baite his steedes the Ocean waues emong."

"The noblest mind the best contentment has."

"A bold bad man, that dar'd to call by name Great Gorgon, prince of darknes and dead night."

"The Northerne wagoner had set His seuenfold teme behind the stedfast starre."

"Will was his guide, and griefe led him astray."

"Better new friend then an old foe."

"Her angels face As the great eye of heauen shyned bright, And made a sunshine in the shady place; Did neuer mortall eye behold such heauenly grace."

"O how can beautie maister the most strong, And simple truth subdue auenging wrong?"

"One louing howre For many yeares of sorrow can dispence: A dram of sweete is worth a pound of sowre."

"A stately Pallace built of squared bricke, Which cunningly was without morter laid, Whose wals were high, but nothing strong, nor thick And golden foile all ouer them displaid, That purest skye with brightnesse they dismaid."

"And all the hinder partes, that few could spie, Were ruinous and old, but painted cunningly."

"Idlenesse the nourse of sin."

"From worldly cares himselfe he did esloyne, And greatly shunned manly exercise, From euerie worke he chalenged essoyne, For contemplation sake: yet otherwise, His life he led in lawlesse riotise; By which he grew to grieuous malady; For in his lustlesse limbs through euill guise A shaking feuer raignd continually: Such one was Idlenesse."

"And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony, Deformed creature, on a filthie swyne, His belly was vpblowne with luxury; And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne."

"And greedy Auarice by him did ride, Vppon a Camell loaden all with gold; Two iron coffets hong on either side, With precious metall full, as they might hold, And in his lap an heap of coine he told; For of his wicked pelpe his God he made, And vnto hell him selfe for money sold; Accursed vsury was all his trade, And right and wrong ylike in equall ballaunce waide.'His life was nigh vnto deaths dore yplaste, And thred-bare cote, and cobled shoes hee ware, Ne scarse good morsell all his life did taste, But both from backe and belly still did spare, To fill his bags, and richesse to compare; Yet childe ne kinsman liuing had he none To leaue them to; but thorough daily care To get, and nightly feare to lose his owne, He led a wretched life vnto him selfe vnknowne.'Most wretched wight, whom nothing might suffise, Whose greedy lust did lacke in greatest store, Whose need had end, but no end couetise, Whose welth was want, whose plēty made him pore, Who had enough, yett wished euer more."

"He hated all good workes and vertuous deeds, And him no lesse, that any like did vse, And who with gratious bread the hungry feeds, His almes for want of faith he doth accuse; So euery good to bad he doth abuse: And eke the verse of famous Poets witt He does backebite, and spightfull poison spues From leprous mouth on all, that euer writt: Such one vile Enuy was, that first in row did sitt."