The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.
Forbid us something, and that thing we desire.
People can die of mere imagination.
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.
For hym was levere have at his beddes heed Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed, Of Aristotle and his philosophie, Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie.
How potent is the fancy! People are so impressionable, they can die of imagination.
If gold rusts, what then can iron do?
And she was fair as is the rose in May.
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.
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.
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.
That of all the floures in the mede, Thanne love I most these floures white and rede, Suche as men callen daysyes in her toune.
Woe to the cook whose sauce has no sting.
One flesh they are; and one flesh, so I’d guess, Has but one heart, come grief or happiness.
This flour of wifly patience.
This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo, And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and fro.
First he wrought, and afterwards he taught.
But al be that he was a philosophre, Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre.
A whetstone is no carving instrument, And yet it maketh sharp the carving tool; And if you see my efforts wrongly spent, Eschew that course and learn out of my school; For thus the wise may profit by the fool, And edge his wit, and grow more keen and wary, For wisdom shines opposed to its contrary.
In April the sweet showers fall And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all The veins are bathed in liquor of such power As brings about the engendering of the flower.