Chrétien de Troyes Quotes

Nus ne puet estre trop parliers
Qui sovent tel chose ne die
Qui torné li est affolie,
Car li sages dit et retrait:
Qui trop parole, il se mesfait.

The joy of love when it comes late is like the burning of a green log, which gives out all the more heat and keeps its ability to do so all the longer, the slower it is to kindle.

For hunger is a sauce, well blended and prepared, for any food.

Que molt est malvais qui oblie
S'on li fait honte ne laidure.

Only a very base person forgets when he is done some shame or mischief.

Bien pert que c'est aprés mangier,
Fet Kex, qui teire ne se pot
Plus a paroles an plain pot
De vin qu'an un mui de cervoise.

He was one of the first explorers of the human heart, and is therefore rightly to be numbered among the fathers of the novel of sentiment.

Par le sornon connoist on l'ome.

If someone kisses a woman and goes no further once they are alone together, then in my opinion it's his own fault. A woman who freely surrenders her lips gives the rest very readily.

Joie d'amors qui vient a tart
Sanble la vert busche qui art,
Qui dedanz rant plus grant chalor
Et plus se tient en sa valor,
Quant plus demore a alumer.

No one can be too talkative without often saying something that makes him look foolish, for the wise man's saying goes: "Whoever talks too much does himself a bad turn."

Qu'a toz mangiers est sausse fains
Bien destanpree et bien confite.

Qui baise feme et plus n'i fait,
Des qu'il sont sol a sol andui,
Dont quit je qu'il remaint en lui.
Feme qui se bouche abandone
Le sorplus molt de legier done.

Chrétien is nothing if not versatile: popular, recherché, allusive, insistent, arch, naïve, racy and demure...He has a dramatist's flair for the handling of dialogue, a deft and economic way with characterization, the sharp confidence of the logician in his handling of rhetorical figures and the self-assurance of the entertainer in the deployment of humour (he is master of the verbal nudge). It is his essential vivacity that one misses most in his imitators.

One knows the man by the name he has.