Quotes About Chaucer

Things that have been foolishly done, in the hope of favorable Fortune, will never come to a good end.' And, as the same Seneca says, 'The more clear and the more shining that Fortune is, the more brittle and the sooner broken is she.

Brimful of pardons come from Rome, all hot. He had the same small voice a goat has got

Now peradventure, in that mighty book Which men call heaven, it had come to pass, In stars, when first a living breath he took, That he for love should get his death, alas!

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.

Soul of the age!The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee byChaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lieA little further, to make thee a room;Thou art a monument, without a tomb,And art alive still, while thy book doth live,And we have wits to read, and praise to give.

If we took Chaucer's writings at face value, we'd have to conclude he was a complete drip.

'My lige lady, generally,' quod he, 'Wommen desyren to have sovereyntee As well over hir housbond as hir love.'

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'.

I have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon / Middle English by a friend who had to take it for her Ph.D. They told her to write an essay in Early Anglo-Saxon on any-subject-of-her-own-choosing. "Which is all very well," she said bitterly, "but the only essay subject you can find enough Early Anglo-Saxon words for is 'How to Slaughter a Thousand Men in a Mead Hall'.

arcipreste de Hita, en cuyo Libro de Buen Amor supo presentar (como Chaucer con sus obras en Inglaterra) una imagen fiel, a la vez que cargada de ingenio, de la vida de su tiempo.

I did modern English and American literature at Kent University, with no Chaucer and no Middle English: a perfect course.

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

Beside the refined, almost Greek, simplicity of Chaucer's poetry, the ornamented verse of the contemporary north-western poet rears like A Hindu temple, exotic and densely fashioned.

Miracles do not happen:—'t is plain sense, If you italicize the present tense; But in those days, as rare old Chaucer tells, All Britain was fulfilled of miracles. So, as I said, the great doors opened wide. In rushed a blast of winter from outside, And with it, galloping on the empty air, A great green giant on a great green mare

O yonge, fresshe folkes, he or she,In which that love up groweth with youre age,Repeyreth hom fro worldly vanyte.

By God! in erthe I was his purgatorie,For which I hope his Soule be in glorie.

But manly sette the world on six and sevene;And if thow deye a martyr, go to hevene!

"My lige lady, generally," quod he,"Wommen desiren have sovereyneteeAs well over hir housbond as hir love."

That, of al the floures in the mede,Thanne love I most thise floures white and rede,Swiche as men callen daysyes in our toun.

A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also.

May, with alle thy floures and thy grene,Welcome be thou, faire, fresshe May.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Love will not be constrain'd by mastery. When mast'ry comes, the god of love anon Beateth his wings, and, farewell, he is gone. Love is a thing as any spirit free.

And once he had got really drunk on wine, Then he would speak no language but Latin.