"Heraldry is the fusion of fact and fancy, myth and manner, romance and reality. It is an exuberant union of family, art, and history."–Charles Burnett and Mark Dennis in The Lion Rejoicing (1997)
"In their beginnings armorial bearings were essentially military, and military authority in those days flowed from and depended on the tenure of the land. It followed that the early arms were identified almost as closely with the land as with the man, with a particular county, lordship or estate as with the owner. Later the personal aspect prevailed and for some centuries arms have belonged to and have distinguished the individual."–Hugh Stanford London
"A lion, for instance, which in nature is not a very distinctive object, was portrayed, for greater distinction, with its leonine attributes, its fierce expression, frightful claws, lithe and lissom body all vastly exaggerated, so that indeed it looked more like a lion than did ever any lion of nature. In this wise, by turning away from true representation and adopting a character all its own, was the 'heraldic lion' born, and with it came also the manner of depictin all the other beasts and forms and patterns which is so peculiarly heraldic."–Sir George Rothe Bellew
