The Canterbury Tales Quotes

“people can die of mere imagination”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, 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, The Canterbury Tales

“If gold rusts, what then can iron do?”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, 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, The Canterbury Tales

“No empty handed man can lure a bird”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

“And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, 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, The Canterbury Tales

“But Christ's lore and his apostles twelve,
He taught and first he followed it himself.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

“Be nat wrooth, my lord, though that I pleye. Ful ofte in game a sooth I have herd seye!”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales