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 … - Chrétien de Troyes

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.

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.