Explore Quotes by Geoffrey Chaucer

Women naturally desire the same six things as I; they want their husbands to be brave, wise, rich, generous with money, obedient to the wife, and lively in bed.

Truth is the highest thing that man may keep.

Thus with hir fader for a certeyn space_x000D__x000D_Dwelleth this flour of wyfly pacience,_x000D__x000D_That neither by hir wordes ne hir face_x000D__x000D_Biforn the folk, ne eek in her absence,_x000D__x000D_Ne shewed she that hir was doon offence.

Time and tide wait for no man.

For tyme ylost may nought recovered be.

Love will not be constrain'd by mastery. When mast'ry comes, the god of love anon Beateth his wings, and, farewell, he is gone. Love is a thing as any spirit free.

Patience is a conquering virtue.

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.

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

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

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.

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

With empty hand no man can lure a hawk.

If gold rusts, what then can iron do?

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

And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

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