Top 100 Quotes About Geoffrey Chaucer
#1. The worshipful father and first founder and embellisher of ornate eloquence in our English, I mean Master Geoffrey Chaucer.
William Caxton
#2. What makes Geoffrey Chaucer such compelling reading is his creation of a riveting conversation between the ideal and the everyday.
John Mark Reynolds
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. 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
#7. 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
#8. Drunkenness is the very sepulcher
Of man's wit and his discretion.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#10. This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo, And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and fro.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#11. 'My lige lady, generally,' quod he, 'Wommen desyren to have sovereyntee As well over hir housbond as hir love.'
Geoffrey Chaucer
#12. Thou shalt make castels thanne in Spayne And dreme of joye, all but in vayne.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#17. For sondry scoles maken sotile clerkis;
Womman of manye scoles half a clerk is.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#18. Ther nis no werkman, whatsoevere he be, That may bothe werke wel and hastily.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#19. But manly set the world on sixe and sevene; And, if thou deye a martir, go to hevene.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#20. 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
#21. Ne nevere mo ne lakked hire pite;
Tendre-herted, slydynge of corage;
But trewely, I kan nat telle hire age.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#24. Habit maketh no monk, ne wearing of gilt spurs maketh no knight.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#25. 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
#26. 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
#28. 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
#30. Ek gret effect men write in place lite; Th'entente is al, and nat the lettres space.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#33. 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
#34. 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
#40. One shouldn't be too inquisitive in life Either about God's secrets or one's wife.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#42. Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Expierience treacherous. Judgement difficult.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#46. And if love is, what thing and which is he? If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo?
Geoffrey Chaucer
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. Take a cat, nourish it well with milk and tender meat, make it a couch of silk ...
Geoffrey Chaucer
#52. What is better than wisdom? Woman. And what is better than a good woman? Nothing.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#53. It is ful fair a man to bere him evene,/For alday meeteth men at unset stevene.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#55. Yblessed be god that I have wedded fyve! Welcome the sixte, whan that evere he shal.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#57. And so it is in politics, dear brother, Each for himself alone, there is no other.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#61. 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
#62. Certes, they been lye to hounds, for an hound when he cometh by the roses, or by other bushes, though he may nat pisse, yet wole he heve up his leg and make a countenance to pisse.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#63. He that loveth God will do diligence to please God by his works, and abandon himself, with all his might, well for to do.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#69. A bettre preest, I trowe that nowher noon is. He wayted after no pompe and reverence, 525 Ne maked him a spyced conscience, But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, He taughte, and first he folwed it him-selve.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#70. For thus men seyth, That on thenketh the beere,
But al another thenketh his ledere.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#71. By Pluto sent at the request of Saturn. Arcita's horse in terror danced a pattern And leapt aside and foundered as he leapt, And ere he was aware Arcite was swept Out of the saddle and pitched upon his head Onto the ground, and there he lay for dead; His breast was shattered by the saddle-bow.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#72. I know that my singing doesn't make the moon rise, nor does it make the stars shine. But without my song, the night would seem empty and incomplete. There is more to daybreak than light, just as there is more to nighttime than darkness.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#75. 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
#80. Or as an ook comth of a litel spir, So thorugh this lettre, which that she hym sente, Encressen gan desir, of which he brente.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#81. And shame it is, if that a priest take keep, To see a shitten shepherd and clean sheep:
Geoffrey Chaucer
#87. The devil can only destroy those who are already on their way to damnation.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#88. For hym was levere have at his beddes heed
Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophie,
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#90. For oute of olde feldys, as men sey,
Comyth al this newe corn from yer to yere;
And out of olde bokis, in good fey,
Comyth al this newe science that men lere.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#91. Loke who that is most vertuous alway, Prive and apert, and most entendeth ay To do the gentil dedes that he can, And take him for the gretest gentilman.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#92. Nowhere so busy a man as he than he, and yet he seemed busier than he was.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#94. For I have seyn of a ful misty morwe Folowen ful ofte a myrie someris day.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#96. What's said is said and goes upon its way Like it or not, repent it as you may.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#97. Patience is a conquering virtue. The learned say that, if it not desert you, It vanquishes what force can never reach; Why answer back at every angry speech? No, learn forbearance or, I'll tell you what, You will be taught it, whether you will or not.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#100. For of fortunes sharp adversitee The worst kynde of infortune is this, A man to han ben in prosperitee, And it remembren, whan it passed is.
Geoffrey Chaucer
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