Geoffrey Chaucer Quotes

Shepherds too soft who let their duty sleep, Encourage wolves to tear the lambs and sleep.

And if love is, what thing and which is he? If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo?

This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo,
And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and fro.

The time always flees; it will wait for no man. And through you are still in the flower of your young manhood, age creeps on steadily, as quiet as a stone, and death meanaces every age and strikes in every rank, for no one escapes. As surely as we know that we will die, so we are uncertain of the day when death shall fall on us.

Be nat wrooth, my lord, though that I pleye. Ful ofte in game a sooth I have herd seye!

you are the cause by which I die

"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"

For naturally a beast desires to flee From any enemy that he may see, Though never yet he's clapped on such his eye.

One shouldn’t be too inquisitive in life
Either about God’s secrets or one’s wife.
You’ll find God’s plenty all you could desire;
Of the remainder, better not enquire.

When kindled was the fire, with sober face
Unto Diana spoke she in that place.
“O thou chaste goddess of the wildwood green,
By whom all heaven and earth and sea are seen,
Queen of the realm of Pluto, dark and low,
Goddess of maidens, that my heart dost know
For all my years, and knowest what I desire,
Oh, save me from thy vengeance and thine ire
That on Actaeon fell so cruelly.
Chaste goddess, well indeed thou knowest that I
Desire to be a virgin all my life,
Nor ever wish to be man’s love or wife.
I am, thou know’st, yet of thy company,
A maid, who loves the hunt and venery,
And to go rambling in the greenwood wild,
And not to be a wife and be with child.
I do not crave the company of man.

Three years went by in happiness and health; He bore himself so well in peace and war That there was no one Theseus valued more.

Fortune has dealt us this adversity:
Some malign aspect or disposition
Of Saturn in some adverse position
Has brought it on us; nothing's to be done:
It stood thus in our stars when we were born;
The long and short of it is this: Endure.

Truly she was of elegant deportment, and very pleasing and amiable in bearing. She took pains to counterfeit the manners of the court and to be dignified in behavior and to be held worthy of reverence.

Yet from the wise take this for common sense That to the poor all times are out of joint Therefore beware of reaching such a point.

He kept his tippet stuffed with pins for curls, And pocket-knives, to give to pretty girls.