14th-century Author Quotes

Geoffrey Chaucer

Giovanni Boccaccio

Petrarch

Christine de Pizan

William Langland

Juliana Berners

Al the povere peple tho pescoddes fetten; Benes and baken apples thei broghte in hir lappe, Chibolles and chervelles and ripe chiries manye, And profrede Piers this present to plese with Hunger.

William Langland

Success is not worth rejoicing over, failure is not worth grieving over.

The sport and game of angling is the true means and cause that brings a man into a merry spirit, which makes a flowering age and a long one.

Juliana Berners

The world is comparable to ice, and the Truth to water, the origin of this ice. The name 'ice' is only lent to this coagulation; it is the name of water which is restored to it, according to its essential reality.

Abd al-Karīm al-Jīlī

The chemist of love Will this perishing mould, Were it made out of mire, Transmute into gold.

Quhen Alysander oure kyng wes dede,
That Scotland led in luve and le,
Away wes sons of ale and brede,
Of wyne and wax, of gamyn and gle;
Oure gold wes changyd into lede,
Cryst, borne into virgynyte,
Succour Scotland, and remede,
That stad is in perplexyte.

Andrew of Wyntoun

There are fools who seek to understand the secrets of nature.

O yowthe allas why wilt thow nat enclyne,
And un-to reuled reform bowe thee?
Syn resoun is the verray streighte lyne
Þat ledith folk un-to felicitee.

A prowde hert in a beggers brest,
A fowle visage with gay temples of atyre,
Horrible othes with an holy prist,
A justice of juges to selle and lete to hyre,
A knave to comande and have an empire,
To yeve a jugement of that never was wrought,
To preche of pees and sette eche man on fyre,
It may wele ryme but it accordith nought.

Storys to rede ar delitabill,
Suppos that thai be nocht bot fabill.

It fetches crops from the rich earth,
It's a good beast biting the ground.
It must have its knife and its board
And its food right under its thigh.
It goes unwillingly through stones,
It skins the field with leg outstretched.

A king may spille, a king may save; A king may make of lorde a knave; And of a knave a lorde also.

The snail will get to Easter just as soon.

Eustache Deschamps

There never has been a time when I did not fall in love with one or two in a single day.

Dafydd ap Gwilym

I'll give you some conclusive examples. I repeat — and don't doubt my word — that if it were the custom to send little girls to school and to teach them all sorts of different subjects there, as one does with little boys, they would grasp and learn the difficulties of all the arts and sciences just as easily as the boys do.

Christine de Pizan

One shouldn't be too inquisitive in life Either about God's secrets or one's wife.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Although love dwells in gorgeous palaces, and sumptuous apartments, more willingly than in miserable and desolate cottages, it cannot be denied but that he sometimes causes his power to be felt in the gloomy recesses of forests, among the most bleak and rugged mountains, and in the dreary caves of a desert.

Giovanni Boccaccio