Chaucer followed Nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her.
Railing and praising were his usual themes; and both showed his judgment in extremes. Either over violent or over civil, so everyone to him was either god or devil.
So over violent, or over civil that every man with him was God or Devil.
He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.
Pity melts the mind to love.
Repentance is but want of power to sin.
A thing well said will be wit in all languages.
All delays are dangerous in war.
All objects lose by too familiar a view.
If by the people you understand the multitude, the hoi polloi, ’tis no matter what they think; they are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong; their judgment is a mere lottery.
The fortitude of a Christian consists in patience, not in enterprises which the poets call heroic, and which are commonly the effects of interest, pride and worldly honor.
Bets at first were fool-traps, where the wise like spiders lay in ambush for the flies.
The blushing beauties of a modest maid.
Affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word which I would fain bring back to its original signification of virtue, – I mean good-nature, – are of daily use; they are the bread of mankind and staff of life.
Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections.
Imitation pleases, because it affords matter for inquiring into the truth or falsehood of imitation, by comparing its likeness or unlikeness with the original.
Youth, beauty, graceful action seldom fail: But common interest always will prevail; And pity never ceases to be shown To him who makes the people’s wrongs his own.
Dead men tell no tales.
Was there no milder way but the Small Pox, The very filth’ness of Pandora’s Box?
Seek not thyself without thyself to find.
Two if’s scarce make one possibility.