Geoffrey Chaucer

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Expierience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”

“Patience is a conquering virtue.”

“Yet do not miss the moral, my good men.For Saint Paul says that all that’s written wellIs written down some useful truth to tell.Then take the wheat and let the chaff lie still.”

“Ne nevere mo ne lakked hire pite;Tendre-herted, slydynge of corage;But trewely, I kan nat telle hire age.”

“By God, if women had written stories,As clerks had within here oratories,They would have written of men more wickednessThan all the mark of Adam may redress.”

“Amor vincit omnia”

“The life so brief, the art so long in the learning, the attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp, the fearful joy that ever slips away so quickly - by all this I mean love, which so sorely astounds my feeling with its wondrous operation, that when I think upon it I scarce know whether I wake or sleep.”

“When that Aprille with his shoures sote.The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour,Of which vertue engendred is the flour.”

“One flesh they are; and one flesh, so I'd guess,Has but one heart, come grief or happiness.”

“And once he had got really drunk on wine,Then he would speak no language but Latin.”

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

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

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

“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”

“If gold rusts, what then can iron do?”

“How potent is the fancy! People are so impressionable, they can die of imagination.”

“No empty handed man can lure a bird”

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

“It is ful fair a man to bere him evene,/For alday meeteth men at unset stevene.”

“the greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people”

“people can die of mere imagination”

“What is better than wisdom? Woman. And what is better than a good woman? Nothing.”

“Ful wys is he that kan himselve knowe.”

“The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.”

“Then you compared a woman's love to Hell, To barren land where water will not dwell, And you compared it to a quenchless fire, The more it burns the more is its desire To burn up everything that burnt can be. You say that just as worms destroy a tree A wife destroys her husband and contrives, As husbands know, the ruin of their lives. ”

“Purity in body and heart May please some--as for me, I make no boast. For, as you know, no master of a household Has all of his utensils made of gold; Some are wood, and yet they are of use.”