Top 100 Quotes About Chaucer
#1. I will, however, establish that success in love, as in all other aspects of life, belongs, as a rule, to the persistent and fiber man. Chaucer had reason to make the Old Bath confess: 'The truth is, more or less, we always succumb to attention and perseverance'.
Frank Harris
#2. The quiet tenderness of Chaucer, where you almost seem to hear the hot tears falling, and the simple choking words sobbed out.
James Russell Lowell
#4. You know what my favourite quotation is? ... It's from Chaucer ... Criseyde says it, I am myne owene woman, wel at ese.
Mary McCarthy
#5. Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age.
John Greenleaf Whittier
#6. Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer Said once about the long toil that goes like blood to the poems making? Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls, Limp as bindweed, if it break at all Life's iron crust Man, you must sweat And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build Your verse a ladder.
R.S. Thomas
#7. The story of Ulysses and Agamemnon and Menelaus, of Jesus, of the Good Knight of Chaucer, lives in every one of us.
James Lee Burke
#8. people can die of mere imagination - Geffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
Paul Strohm
#9. In one particular chapter in Ulysses, James Joyce imitates every major writing style that's been used by English and American writers over the last 700 years - starting with Beowulf and Chaucer and working his way up through the Renaissance, the Victorian era and on into the 20th century.
Frederick Lenz
#10. No poem, not even Shakespeare or Milton or Chaucer, is ever strong enough to totally exclude every crucial precursor text or poem.
Harold Bloom
#11. Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales was expected to clock in at anywhere between 100 and 120 chapters. Unfortunately, the dude only managed to finish 24 tales before he suffered an insurmountable and permanent state of writer's block commonly known as death.
Jacopo Della Quercia
#12. The worshipful father and first founder and embellisher of ornate eloquence in our English, I mean Master Geoffrey Chaucer.
William Caxton
#13. What would Chaucer have written about if men were perfect?
Pete Hamill
#14. If we took Chaucer's writings at face value, we'd have to conclude he was a complete drip.
John Hutton
#15. The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.
William Hazlitt
#16. I would find a way to save souls while eradicating demons from this world. I'd find a way to save my own soul. I just had to.
Emily Chaucer.
Demon executioner.
Human savior.
I could only hope.
Ketley Allison
#17. Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever.
Ezra Pound
#19. Of course I didn't pioneer the use of food in fiction: it has been a standard literary device since Chaucer and Rabelais, who used food wonderfully as a metaphor for sensuality.
Joanne Harris
#20. We're like two dogs in battle on their own;
They fought all day but neither got the bone,
There came a kite above them, nothing loth,
And while they fought he took it from them both."
From Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale
Geoffrey Chaucer
#21. Chaucer, like Homer, writes about a journey, but as a Christian he has a different goal. Homer wanted to go home, but Chaucer's pilgrims want a place of man's true home: paradise
John Mark Reynolds
#22. What makes Geoffrey Chaucer such compelling reading is his creation of a riveting conversation between the ideal and the everyday.
John Mark Reynolds
#23. In Homer and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern and moral poets. The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men cling to this old song, because they still have moments of unbaptized and uncommitted life, which give them an appetite for more.
Henry David Thoreau
#24. TEN GREATEST ENGLISH POETS Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning. TEN GREATEST ENGLISH ESSAYISTS Bacon, Addison, Steele, Macaulay, Lamb, Jeffrey, De Quincey, Carlyle, Thackeray and Matthew Arnold.
Joseph Devlin
#25. On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would haveheld up his head in their company.
Henry David Thoreau
#26. I can imagine the writers of China, England and France, crippled and unsure of themselves when they feel that the ghosts of Confucius, Mencius, Chaucer and Shakespeare and Victor Hugo are looking over their shoulders.
F. Sionil Jose
#28. Nowhere in Chaucer do we find what can be called a radically allegorical poem.
C.S. Lewis
#29. If you read only the best, you will have no need of reading the other books, because the latter are nothing but a rehash of the best and the oldest. To read Shakespeare, Plato, Dante, Milton, Spenser, Chaucer, and their compeers in prose, is to read in condensed form what all others have diluted.
Anna Brackett
#30. I shall write a book some day about the appropriateness of names. Geoffrey Chaucer has a ribald ring, as is proper and correct, and Alexander Pope was inevitably Alexander Pope. Colley Cibber was a silly little man without much elegance and Shelley was very Percy and very Bysshe.
James Joyce
#31. Charlotte, N.C., 273 Chastity belt, 55 Chaucer, Geoffrey,
Gay Talese
#32. In another life I would be a medievalist. I loved Chaucer, far more than Shakespeare.
Susan Hill
#33. The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet unfavourable for its growth.
George Saintsbury
#34. The only really detestable character in Chaucer's company of Canterbury pilgrims is the Pardoner with his stringy locks, his eunuch's hairless skin, his glaring eyes like a hare's, and his brazen acknowledgment of the tricks and deceits of his trade.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#35. Sheriff Gibbs, the vocabulary of the English language is the wonder of the whole world. Chaucer spoke it and Shakespeare and Winston Churchill. With such a precedent, you could possibly make better use of it," said Mrs. Perley.
"Huh," said Sheriff Gibbs
Gary D. Schmidt
#36. After I'd been in college for a couple years I'd read Shakespeare and Frost and Chaucer and the poets of the Harlem Renaissance. I'd come to appreciate how gorgeous the English language could be. But most fantasy novels didn't seem to make the effort.
Patrick Rothfuss
#37. If you're a real student of literature, and I mean the good stuff - Chaucer, Shakespeare - you figure out that only souls who truly reflect each other make good love matches.
Andrea Cremer
#38. I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I'm not feeling so well myself.
Mark Twain
#39. I can read Middle English stories, Geoffrey Chaucer or Sir Thomas Malory, but once I start moving in the direction of contemporary fantasy, my mind begins to take over.
David Eddings
#40. As a text, the Quran is more than the foundation of the Islamic religion; it is the source of Arabic grammar. It is to Arabic what Homer is to Greek, what Chaucer is to English: a snapshot of an evolving language, frozen forever in time
Reza Aslan
#41. Chaucer followed Nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her.
John Dryden
#42. When I see imposters like ... Swinburne, [and] Fleay, who know as much early English as my dog, & who fancy they can settle Chaucer difficulties as they blow their noses, then I ridicule or kick them. But earnest students I treat with respect, & am only too glad to learn from them.
James Turner
#43. Purists behave as if there was a vintage year when language achieved a measure of excellence which we should all strive to maintain. In fact, there was never such a year. The language of Chaucer's or Shakespeare's time was no better and no worse than that of our own - just different.
Jean Aitchison
#44. We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit ... But though it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not transcendent poetry.For picturesque description of persons it is, perhaps, without a parallel in English poetry; yet it is essentially humorous, as the loftiest genius never is.
Henry David Thoreau
#45. If a man really loves a woman, of course he wouldn't marry her for the world if he were not quite sure that he was the best person she could possibly marry.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#47. In April the sweet showers fall And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all The veins are bathed in liquor of such power As brings about the engendering of the flower.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#48. Drunkenness is the very sepulcher
Of man's wit and his discretion.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#50. This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo, And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and fro.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#51. 'My lige lady, generally,' quod he, 'Wommen desyren to have sovereyntee As well over hir housbond as hir love.'
Geoffrey Chaucer
#52. Thou shalt make castels thanne in Spayne And dreme of joye, all but in vayne.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#57. For sondry scoles maken sotile clerkis;
Womman of manye scoles half a clerk is.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#58. Ther nis no werkman, whatsoevere he be, That may bothe werke wel and hastily.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#59. But manly set the world on sixe and sevene; And, if thou deye a martir, go to hevene.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#60. Alas, alas, that ever love was sin! I ever followed natural inclination Under the power of my constellation And was unable to deny, in truth, My chamber of Venus to a likely youth.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#61. Ne nevere mo ne lakked hire pite;
Tendre-herted, slydynge of corage;
But trewely, I kan nat telle hire age.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#64. Habit maketh no monk, ne wearing of gilt spurs maketh no knight.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#65. That of all the floures in the mede, Thanne love I most these floures white and rede, Suche as men callen daysyes in her toune.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#67. Soun is noght but air ybroken, And every speche that is spoken, Loud or privee, foul or fair, In his substaunce is but air; For as flaumbe is but lighted smoke, Right so soun is air ybroke.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#69. Ek gret effect men write in place lite; Th'entente is al, and nat the lettres space.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#72. Go litel bok, go, litel myn tragedye,
Ther God thi makere yet, er that he dye,
So sende myght to make in som comedye!
But litel book, no makyng thow n'envie,
But subgit be to alle poesye;
And kis the steppes where as thow seest pace
Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan, and Stace.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#73. For in their hearts doth Nature stir them so Then people long on pilgrimage to go And palmers to be seeking foreign strands To distant shrines renowned in sundry lands.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#79. One shouldn't be too inquisitive in life Either about God's secrets or one's wife.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#81. Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Expierience treacherous. Judgement difficult.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#85. And if love is, what thing and which is he? If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo?
Geoffrey Chaucer
#88. My house is small, but you are learned men And by your arguments can make a place Twenty foot broad as infinite as space.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#89. One cannot scold or complain at every word. Learn to endure patiently, or else, as I live and breathe, you shall learn it whether you want or not.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#90. Take a cat, nourish it well with milk and tender meat, make it a couch of silk ...
Geoffrey Chaucer
#91. What is better than wisdom? Woman. And what is better than a good woman? Nothing.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#92. It is ful fair a man to bere him evene,/For alday meeteth men at unset stevene.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#94. Yblessed be god that I have wedded fyve! Welcome the sixte, whan that evere he shal.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#96. And so it is in politics, dear brother, Each for himself alone, there is no other.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#100. I will eviscerate you in fiction. Every pimple, every character flaw. I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity.
A Knight's Tale
Geoffrey Chaucer
