"Che chi si truova in degno laccio preso, Se ben di sé vede sua donna schiva, Se in tutto aversa al suo desire acceso; Se bene Amor d'ogni mercede il priva, Poscia che 'l tempo e la fatica ha speso; Pur ch'altamente abbia locato il core, Pianger non de', se ben languisce e muore."

"Che non pur per cittadi e per castella, Ma per tuguri ancora e per fenili Spesso si trovan gli uomini gentili."

"Natura il fece, e poi roppe la stampa."

"Quivi il crudo tiranno Amor, che sempre D'ogni promessa sua fu disleale, E sempre guarda come involva e stempre Ogni nostro disegno razionale."

"Bisognan di valor segni più chiari, Che por con leggiadria la lancia in resta: Ma fortuna anco più bisogna assai; Che senza, val virtù raro o non mai."

"Cader de la padella ne le brage."

"Che quant' era più ornata, era più brutta."

"L'amante, per aver quel che desia, Senza guardar che Dio tutto ode e vede, Aviluppa promesse e giuramenti, Che tutti spargon poi per l'aria i venti."

"Ch'aver può donna al mondo più di buono, A cui la castità levata sia?"

"Qual d'acqua chiara il tremolante lume, Dal sol percossa o da' notturni rai, Per gli ampli tetti va con lungo salto A destra et a sinistra, e basso et alto."

"Bene è felice quel, donne mie care, Ch'essere accorto all'altrui spese impare."

"Statti col dolce in bocca; e non ti doglia Ch'amareggiare al fin non te la voglia."

"Veniano sospirando, e gli occhi bassi Parean tener d'ogni baldanza privi."

"Ben s'ode il ragionar, si vede il volto, Ma dentro il petto mal giudicar possi."

"Sei giorni me n'andai matina e sera Per balze e per pendici orride e strane, Dove non via, dove sentier non era."

"Che dona e tolle ogn'altro ben Fortuna; Sol in virtù non ha possanza alcuna."

"Chi va lontan da la sua patria, vede Cose, da quel che già credea, lontane; Che narrandole poi, non se gli crede, E stimato bugiardo ne rimane."

"Non vi vieto per questo (ch'avrei torto) Che vi lasciate amar; che senza amante Sareste come inculta vite in orto, Che non ha palo ove s'appoggi o piante."

"Che chi ne l'acqua sta fin'alla gola Ben'e ostinato se merce non grida."

"La verginella e simile alla rosa Ch'in bel giardin' su la nativa spina Mentre sola e sicura si riposa Ne gregge ne pastor se le avvicina; L'aura soave e l'alba rugiadosa, L'acqua, la terra al suo favor s'inchina: Gioveni vaghi e donne inamorate Amano averne e seni e tempie ornate.'Ma no si tosto dal materno stelo Rimossa viene, e dal suo ceppo verde Che quato havea dagli huoi e dal cielo Favor gratia e bellezza tutto perde."

"Quel che l'huom vede Amor gli fa invisibile E l'invisibil fa vedere Amore."

"Che per amor venne in furore e matto, d'huom che si saggio era stimato prima."

"Le donne i cavallier, l'arme, gli amori, Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto."

"Ogni pelo arricciossi E scolorossi al Saracino il viso, La voce ch'era per uscir fermossi."

"Il miser suole Dar facile credenza a quel che vuole."

"Misero è ben chi veder schiva il sole!"

"Che rilevare un che Fortuna ruote Talora al fondo, e consolar l'afflitto, Mai non fu biasmo, ma gloria sovente."

"Fatto per timor, nullo è il contratto."

"Ingiustissimo Amor, perché sì raro Corrispondenti fai nostri desiri? Onde, perfido, avvien che t'è sì caro Il discorde voler ch’in duo cor miri?"

"It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor: For some that hath abundance at his will Hath not enough, but wants in greatest store; And other that hath little asks no more, But in that little is both rich and wise; For wisdom is most riches; fools therefore They are which fortunes do by vows devise, Since each unto himself his life may fortunize."

"Old love is little worth when new is more preferred."

"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)"

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

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

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

"Give salves to every sore, but counsel to the mind."

"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 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)"

"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."

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

"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."

"For we by conquest of our sovereign might, And by eternal doom of Fates' decree, Have won the empire of the heavens bright."

"No wound, which warlike hand of enemy Inflicts with dint of sword, so sore doth light As doth the poisonous sting which infamy Infixeth in the name of noble wight: For by no art, nor any leach's might, It ever can recured be again; Nor all the skill, which that immortal spright Of Podalirius did in it retain, Can remedy such hurts; such hurts are hellish pain."

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

"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."

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

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