Geoffrey Chaucer Quotes

earn what you can since everything's for sale

But Christ's lore and his apostles twelve,
He taught and first he followed it himself.

High on a stag the Goddess held her seat,
And there were little hounds about her feet;
Below her feet there was a sickle moon,
Waxing it seemed, but would be waning soon.
Her statue bore a mantle of bright green,
Her hand a bow with arrows cased and keen;
Her eyes were lowered, gazing as she rode
Down to where Pluto has his dark abode.

"For if a priest be foul, on whom we trust,
No wonder is a common man should rust"
-The Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales-

Thus in this heaven he took his delight And smothered her with kisses upon kisses Till gradually he came to know where bliss is.

we know little of the things for which we pray

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.

If no love is, O God, what fele I so?
And if love is, what thing and which is he?
If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo?
If it be wikke, a wonder thynketh me

Who shall give a lover any law?’ Love is a greater law, by my troth, than any law written by mortal man.

The man who has no wife is no cuckold.

For he would rather have, by his bedside, twenty books, bound in black or red, of Aristotle and his philosophy, than rich robes or costly fiddles or gay harps.

Until we're rotten, we cannot be ripe.

Youre tale anoyeth al this compaignye.
Swich talkyng is nat worth a boterflye,

Ye knowe eek, that in forme of speche is chaunge
With-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden prys, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem; and yet they spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do.

Her statue, glorious in majesty,
Stood naked, floating on a vasty sea,
And from the navel down there were a mass
Of green and glittering waves as bright as glass.
In her right hand a cithern carried she
And on her head, most beautiful to see,
A garland of fresh roses, while above
There circles round her many a flickering dove.