Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"You're wearying me
to death, I say, with your illiterate stuff.
God bless my soul! I've had about enough.
My ears are aching from your frowsty story!
The devil take such rhymes! They're purgatory!"

• The Canterbury Tales (Host's interruption of the Tale of Sir Topaz) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003). 

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"God has some secrets that we shouldn't know.
How blessed are the simple, aya, indeed,
That only know enough to say their creed!"

• The Canterbury Tales (The Miller's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003). 

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"For every man will perish, king and page,
Some in their beds and some in the deep sea,
And some upon the battle-field, maybe.
There is no help for it, all take the track,
For all must die and there is none comes back"

• The Canterbury Tales (The Knight's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"Fields have their eyes, and forests have their ears.
It's well to be upon one's guard, I mean,
Since all day long we meet the unforseen."

• The Canterbury Tales (The Knight's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"It's men that are untrue
And women, women ever blamed anew.
I think it a pretence that men profess
They hide behind a charge of faithlessness."

• The Canterbury Tales (The Merchant's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"Never let innocence besot your head,
But take the helm yourselves and trim the sail."

• The Canterbury Tales (Envoy to the Clerk's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"Still in the flower of your youth's delights
Age creeps upon you, silent as a stone.
Death menaces all ages and he smites
The high and low, the known and the unknown;
We see for certain, are obliged to own
That we must die, but we are ignorant of all
Of when the hour's to come, the blow to fall."

• From The Canterbury Tales (The Clerk's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"O stormy people, frivolous and fickle,
Void of true judgement, turning like a vane,
Whom every novelty and rumor tickle,
How like the moon you are to wax and wane,
Clapping your praises, shouting your disdain,
False judges, dear at a penny as a rule,
Who trusts to your opinion is a fool."

• From The Canterbury Tales (The Clerk's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400)

"Love is a thing as any spirit free;
Women by nature long for liberty
And not to be constrained or made a thrall,
And so do men, if I may speak for all."

• From The Canterbury Tales (The Franklin's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"When something's difficult, or can't be had,
We crave and cry for it all day like mad.
Forbid a thing, we pine for it all night,
Press fast upon is and we take to flight."

• From The Canterbury Tales (The Wife of Bath's Prologue) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"I hope the company won't reprove me
Though I should speak as fantasy may move me,
And please don't be offended at my views;
They're really only offered to amuse."

• From The Canterbury Tales (The Wife of Bath's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"Beware, my son, and listen patiently,
For twenty thousand men have lost their lives
For wrangling with their lovers and their wives."

• From The Canterbury Tales (The Summoner's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated into modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"Consider too how hard the stone we tread
Under our feet! That very rock and bed
On which we walk is wasting as it lies.
Time will be when the broadest river dries
And the great cities wane and last descend
Into the dust, for all things have an end."

• From The Canterbury Tales (The Knight's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated into modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"Changeable Fortune, O unstable Chance,
Thine is the scorpion's treacherous advance!
Thy head all flattery, about to sting,
Thy tail a death, and death by poisoning.
O Brittle joy, O venom sweet and strange,
O monster that so subtly canst arrange
Thy gifts and colour them with all the dyes
Of durability to catch the wise
And foolish too!"

• From The Canterbury Tales (The Merchant's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated into modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"There came a privy thief, they call him Death
Who kills us all round here, and in a breath
He speared him through the heart, he never stirred.
And then Death went his way without a word."

• From The Canterbury Tales (The Pardoner's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated into modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"'Murder will out.' We see it day by day.
Murder's a foul, abominable treason,
So loathsome to God's justice, to God's reason,
He will not suffer its concealment. True,
Things may lie hidden for a year or two,
But still 'Murder will out,' that's my conclusion."

• From The Canterbury Tales (The Nun's Priest's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated into modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400)

"Wherever there is drunkenness about
No secret can be hidden, make no doubt."

• From The Canterbury Tales (The Man of Law's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chuacer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"Now as I've drunk a draught of corn-ripe ale,
By God it stands to reason I can strike
On some good story that you all will like.
For though I am a wholly vicious man
Don't think I can't tell moral tales. I can!"

• From The Canterbury Tales (The Pardoner's Prologue) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (English poet, c. 1342-1400)

"The busy lark, the messenger of day,
Sings salutation to the morning grey,
And fiery Phoebus rising up so bright
Sets all the Orient laughting with the light,
And with his streams he dries the dewy sheaves
And silver droplets hanging on the leaves."

• From The Canterbury Tales (The Knight's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003). 

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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)

"He who accepts his poverty unhurt
I'd say is rich although he lacked a shirt,
But truly poor are they who whine and fret
And covet what they cannot hope to get.
And he that, having nothing, covets not,
Is rich, though you may think he is a sot."

• From The Canterbury Tales (The Wife of Bath's Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).

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