Chrétien de Troyes Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

One knows the man by the name he has.

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.

Amors sanz crieme et sans peor
Est feus sanz flame et sanz chalor,
Jorz sanz soloil, bresche sanz miel,
Estez sans flor, iverz sanz giel,
Ciaus sanz lune, livres sanz letre.

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.

Our books have informed us that the pre-eminence in chivalry and learning once belonged to Greece. Then chivalry passed to Rome, together with that highest learning which now has come to France. God grant that it may be cherished here, and that it may be made so welcome here that the honour which has taken refuge with us may never depart from France: God had awarded it as another's share, but of Greeks and Romans no more is heard, their fame is passed, and their glowing ash is dead.

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."

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.

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

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

Par le sornon connoist on l'ome.

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