Old English Quotes

“In Old English, thou (thee, thine, etc.) was singular and you was plural. But during the thirteenth century, you started to be used as a polite form of the singular - probably because people copied the French way of talking, where vous was used in that way. English then became like French, which has tu and vous both possible for singulars; and that allowed a choice. The norm was for you to be used by inferiors to superiors - such as children to parents, or servants to masters, and thou would be used in return. But thou was also used to express special intimacy, such as when addressing God. It was also used when the lower classes talked to each other. The upper classes used you to each other, as a rule, even when they were closely related.
So, when someone changes from thou to you in a conversation, or the other way round, it conveys a different pragmatic force. It will express a change of attitude, or a new emotion or mood.”
― David Crystal

“Cwædon þæt he wære wyruld-cyninga,
manna mildust ond mon-ðwærust,
leodum liðost ond lof-geornost.”
― Anonymous, Beowulf

“Ah, fairest maiden, thine beauty doth maketh mine loins stir, and mine cup runneth over.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman, Kaya Abaniah and the Father of the Forest

“In the earliest English, the word bully was created by borrowing boel from the Dutch language. It means lover or sweetheart. Today, it is used to talk about someone who gets off by intimidating others because making others feel inferior is the only way for them to feel better about themselves maybe.
Oh, how the words have fallen – literally fallen from grace!”
― Sijdah Hussain, Red Sugar, No More

“To make a tarte of strawberyes," wrote Margaret Parker in 1551, "take and strayne theym with the yolkes of four eggs, and a little whyte breade grated, then season it up with suger and swete butter and so bake it." And Jess, who had spent the past year struggling with Kant's Critiques, now luxuriated in language so concrete. Tudor cookbooks did not theorize, nor did they provide separate ingredient lists, or scientific cooking times or temperatures. Recipes were called receipts, and tallied materials and techniques together. Art and alchemy were their themes, instinct and invention. The grandest performed occult transformations: flora into fauna, where, for example, cooks crushed blanched almonds and beat them with sugar, milk, and rose water into a paste to "cast Rabbets, Pigeons, or any other little bird or beast." Or flour into gold, gilding marchpane and festive tarts. Or mutton into venison, or fish to meat, or pig to fawn, one species prepared to stand in for another.”
― Allegra Goodman, The Cookbook Collector

“All, right then." Henry raised his hand like a sorcerer. "Oh, Ling Chan, Madame Curie of the dream world," he intoned dramatically, barely keeping a straight face. "Sleep hath released thee! Now is the time thou must waketh!"
Ling rolled her eyes. "You're an idiot.”
― Libba Bray, Lair of Dreams

“I go to the larder for the quinces and stop in amazement. For the larder is brimming over with food. Baskets of field mushrooms. Trugs of green apples and yellow pears. A metal bath containing two pink crabs. Slabs of newly churned butter as bright as a dandelion flower. Wheels of pale yellow cheese the size of my head. An earthenware bowl of cobnuts. A ham soaking in a pail of water.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“Shelby looked over to see Andrew silently mouthing syllables to himself, as if he were part of an ecstatic rite. He grinned as he bit fricatives and tongued plosives. He was tasting English origins, mulling over words ripped from bronze-smelling hoards. Words that had slept beneath centuries of dust and small rain, sharp and bright as scale mail. Poetry had never moved her quite so much as drama. She loved the shock of colloquy, the beat and treble of words doing what they had to on stage. Andrew preferred the echo of poems buried alive.”
― Bailey Cunningham, Pile of Bones

“Now!
Forgive me not for what I say
Much less what I feel...
My lady,
You the one who stole my soul and hid it thou heart
My lady!
Gave my this curse of love!...
Love, love gave it life
But at what cost?
Now... Now I know not what is to belong to my self
I have lost my will to live if not by your side.
But how tis' came to be?
I know little of what came to pass but one thing I know
My love for you is true
I belong to you”
― Alexander Caban Jr.

“What good is ye world when ye canst not livest hither.”
― K. Hari Kumar, That Frequent Visitor

“In my youth, I was always touched by what I couldn't see.”
― Petra Hermans, Voor een betere wereld

“Like everyone who's ever translated this text, I had some fun.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Beowulf

“You're incorrigible." She punched his shoulder. "And your attempts at embarrassing me are terribly ignoble."
He stood too, body loose with laughter, and too close for comfort. "Quit using Old English to distract me. Also, you need to work on those tells, Knightlina."
"I'm terrified to ask."
"Well, Old English is your crutch when you're uncomfortable. But we digress.”
― Sonali Dev, The Emma Project

“You and I, friend Less-el-lee,” said that same farmer, clapping the Squire on the shoulder. “We shall come to see if I have built you a house and an enclosure worthy of this paragon among pigs! Come! Come! And if you do not like it, then I shall slay myself in grief!”
― Mercedes Lackey, Beyond

“Man deÞ swa he byÞ Þonne he mot swa he wile, ‘A man does as he is when he can do what he wants’, and what this means is that power reveals character, not that it alters it.”
― Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

“The Old English word is wyrd, which most glossaries and dictionaries translate as ‘fate’. Tolkien knew that the etymologies of the two words were quite different, ‘fate’ coming from the Latin fari, ‘to speak’, so ‘that which has been spoken’, sc. by the gods. The Old English word derives from weorÞan, ‘to become’: it means ‘what has become, what’s over’, so among other things, ‘history’ – a historian is a wyrdwritere, a writer-down of wyrd.”
― Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century