Geoffrey Chaucer Quotes - Page 4

Every honest miller has a golden thumb.

Soun is noght but air ybroken, And every speche that is spoken, Loud or privee, foul or fair, In his substaunce is but air; For as flaumbe is but lighted smoke, Right so soun is air ybroke.

One cannot be avenged for every wrong; according to the occasion, everyone who knows how, must use temperance.

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

Time lost, as men may see, For nothing may recovered be.

To keep demands as much skill as to win.

For out of old fields, as men saith, Cometh all this new corn from year to year; And out of old books, in good faith, Cometh all this new science that men learn.

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

I gave my whole heart up, for him to hold.

A whetstone is no carving instrument, And yet it maketh sharp the carving tool; And if you see my efforts wrongly spent, Eschew that course and learn out of my school; For thus the wise may profit by the fool, And edge his wit, and grow more keen and wary, For wisdom shines opposed to its contrary.

But manly set the world on sixe and sevene; And, if thou deye a martir, go to hevene.

One cannot scold or complain at every word. Learn to endure patiently, or else, as I live and breathe, you shall learn it whether you want or not.

Take a cat, nourish it well with milk and tender meat, make it a couch of silk.

If love be good, from whence cometh my woe?

A yokel mind loves stories from of old, Being the kind it can repeat and hold.

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.

In love there is but little rest.

First he wrought, and afterwards he taught.

Harde is his heart that loveth nought In May.

Fo lo, the gentil kind of the lioun! For when a flye offendeth him or byteth, He with his tayl awey the flye smyteth Al esily, for, of his genterye, Him deyneth net to wreke him on a flye, As cloth a curre or elles another beste.

For God's love, take things patiently, have sense, Think! We are prisoners and shall always be. Fortune has given us this adversity, Some wicked planetary dispensation, Some Saturn's trick or evil constellation Has given us this, and Heaven, though we had sworn The contrary, so stood when we were born. We must endure it, that's the long and short.

Ther nis no werkman, whatsoevere he be, That may bothe werke wel and hastily.

With emptie hands men may no haukes lure.

For thogh we slepe, or wake, or rome, or ryde, Ay fleeth the tyme; it nyl no man abyde.

Filth and old age, I'm sure you will agree, are powerful wardens upon chastity.