“people can die of mere imagination”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“If gold rusts, what then can iron do?”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“No empty handed man can lure a bird”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“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. ”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“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.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“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.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“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.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“But Christ's lore and his apostles twelve,
He taught and first he followed it himself.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“And high above, depicted in a tower,
Sat Conquest, robed in majesty and power,
Under a sword that swung above his head,
Sharp-edged and hanging by a subtle thread.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“High on a stag the Goddess held her seat,
And there were little hounds about her feet;
Below her feet there was a sickle moon,
Waxing it seemed, but would be waning soon.
Her statue bore a mantle of bright green,
Her hand a bow with arrows cased and keen;
Her eyes were lowered, gazing as she rode
Down to where Pluto has his dark abode.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“But for to telle yow al hir beautee,
It lyth nat in my tonge, n'yn my konnyng;
I dar nat undertake so heigh a thyng.
Myn Englissh eek is insufficient.
It moste been a rethor excellent
That koude his colours longynge for that art,
If he sholde hire discryven every part.
I am noon swich, I moot speke as I kan.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“Youre tale anoyeth al this compaignye.
Swich talkyng is nat worth a boterflye,”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“By God," quod he, "for pleynly, at a word,
Thy drasty rymyng is nat worth a toord!”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in switch licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So Priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“Her statue, glorious in majesty,
Stood naked, floating on a vasty sea,
And from the navel down there were a mass
Of green and glittering waves as bright as glass.
In her right hand a cithern carried she
And on her head, most beautiful to see,
A garland of fresh roses, while above
There circles round her many a flickering dove.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“Youth may outrun the old, but not outwit.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“He who repeats a tale after a man,
Is bound to say, as nearly as he can,
Each single word, if he remembers it,
However rudely spoken or unfit,
Or else the tale he tells will be untrue,
The things invented and the phrases new.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“Be nat wrooth, my lord, though that I pleye. Ful ofte in game a sooth I have herd seye!”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“There are no footnotes or endnotes in this translation. If any explanations or clarifications are required, they are embedded in the body of the text, so as not to interrupt the flow of the words. After all, as Noel Coward once famously remarked, “Having to read a footnote resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“The man who has no wife is no cuckold.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“Ye sey right sooth; this Monk he clappeth lowde.
He spak how Fortune covered with a clowde
I noot nevere what; and als of a tragedie
Right now ye herde, and pardee, no remedie
It is for to biwaille ne compleyne
That that is doon, and als it is a peyne,
As ye han seyd, to heere of hevynesse.
Sire Monk, namoore of this, so God yow blesse!
Youre tale anoyeth al this compaignye.
Swich talkyng is nat worth a boterflye,”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“La moraleja de todas las tragedias es la misma: que la Fortuna siempre ataca a los reinos prepotentes cuando menos lo esperan.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“O woman’s counsel is so often cold! A woman’s counsel brought us first to woe, Made Adam out of Paradise to go Where he had been so merry, so well at ease.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“la virtud que corona la perfección es la paciencia".”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“Then the Miller fell off his horse.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“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.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“Who shall give a lover any law?’ Love is a greater law, by my troth, than any law written by mortal man.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“Jesús de Sirach afirma: «Quien tiene el corazón alegre y contento se conserva vigoroso a través de los años, pero un corazón entristecido reseca los huesos».”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
“But of no nombre mencioun made he, Of bigamye, or of octogamye33. Why sholde men thanne speke of it vileinye34?”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer
Born place: London, England
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“Owain crossed his arms over his chest. "I've gone straight. Only good, clean jobs for me now."
"So, in other words," North said, "you're living in poverty?”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Brightly Woven
“Gregor grinned. “Congratulations to you, too, Miles. Your father before you needed a whole army to do it, but you’ve changed Barrayaran history just with a dinner invitation.” Miles shrugged helplessly. God, is everybody going to blame me for this? And for everything that follows? “Let’s try to avoid making history on this one, eh? I think we should push for unalleviated domestic dullness.” “With all my heart,” Gregor agreed. With a cheery salute, he cut the com. Miles laid his head down on the table, and moaned. “It’s not my fault!” “Yes, it is,” said Ivan. “It was all your idea. I was there when you came up with it.” “No, it wasn’t. It was yours. You’re the one who dragooned me into attending the damned state dinner in the first place.” “I only invited you. You invited Galeni. And anyway, my mother dragooned me.” “Oh. So it’s all her fault. Good. I can live with that.” Ivan”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Memory
“Greška je u čoveku ili ženi, a ne u biti vaseljene.”
― Raymond E. Feist, quote from Magician: Apprentice
“It is too. Who’d have imagine big, bad Lucian Bane is afraid of spiders.”
― Lucian Bane, quote from Dom Wars: Round Six
“Teachers dread nothing so much as unusual characteristics in precocious boys during the initial stages of their adolescence. A certain streak of genius makes an ominous impression on them, for there exists a deep gulf between genius and the teaching profession. Anyone with a touch of genius seems to his teachers a freak from the very first. As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smoke at fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, can be found at sixteen hanging out in bars, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, occasionally stare down a teacher in class, are marked in the attendance book as rebels, and are budding candidates for room-arrest. A schoolmaster will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in his class than a single genius, and if you regard it objectively, he is of course right. His task is not to produce extravagant intellects but good Latinists, arithmeticians and sober decent folk. The question of who suffers more acutely at the other's hands - the teacher at the boy's, or vice versa - who is more of a tyrant, more of a tormentor, and who profanes parts of the other's soul, student or teacher, is something you cannot examine without remembering your own youth in anger and shame. yet that s not what concerns us here. We have the consolation that among true geniuses the wounds almost always heal. As their personalities develop, they create their art in spite of school. Once dead, and enveloped by the comfortable nimbus of remoteness, they are paraded by the schoolmasters before other generations of students as showpieces and noble examples. Thus teh struggle between rule and spirit repeats itself year after year from school to school. The authorities go to infinite pains to nip the few profound or more valuable intellects in the bud. And time and again the ones who are detested by their teachers are frequently punished, the runaways and those expelled, are the ones who afterwards add to society's treasure. But some - and who knows how many? - waste away quiet obstinacy and finally go under.”
― Hermann Hesse, quote from Beneath the Wheel
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