Quotes from Jeffrey Burton Russell

It must first be reiterated that with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat

Every sign of gratitude is a sign of hope

As the sign of a deeper truth, metaphor was close to sacrament. Because the vastness and richness of reality cannot be expressed by the overt sense of a statement alone.

Renaissance" is not a good historical term, since it implies death and rebirth and great cataclysmic changes. There are few abysses or chasms in history; there are merely times when cultural change takes place more quickly and vigorously than at others.

Renaissance painters saw everything from one perspective, photographically, "realistically," but medieval painters looked at a scene from several different perspectives at once. A medieval picture looked at with this in mind becomes very exciting indeed. It is as if the artist is everywhere at once: the castle is tiny as if seen from afar; the men on its battlements huge as if encountered face to face; this lake is seen from that distance and that tree from this.