The worshipful father and first founder and embellisher of…

Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America,…

— Henry David Thoreau

Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of…

— Ezra Pound

“The characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and nations. As one age falls, another rises, different to mortal sight,…

— William Blake

“the most famous of all those who had an acquaintance with cryptology in the Middle Ages was an English customs official, amateur astronomer, and…

— David Kahn

We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit… But though it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not transcendent poetry.For picturesque…

— Henry David Thoreau

Purists behave as if there was a vintage year when language achieved a measure of excellence which we should all strive to maintain. In…

— Jean Aitchison

“Great peace is found in little busy-ness. Chaucer”

— Sylvia Shaw Judson

The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet unfavourable for…

— George Saintsbury

“Geoffrey Chaucer, the first author in the English language, devoted the longest story in The Canterbury Tales to the Asian conqueror Genghis Khan of…

— Jack Weatherford

The church itself has got to go outside of its own borders and carry the gospel to ev'ry creature, or it is no church…

— Edward Everett Hale

“Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales was expected to clock in at anywhere between 100 and 120 chapters. Unfortunately, the dude only managed to finish 24…

— Jacopo della Quercia

“Chaucer's world in The Canterbury Tales brings together, for the first time, a diversity of characters, social levels, attitudes, and ways of life. The…

— Ronald Carter

On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would haveheld up…

— Henry David Thoreau

I have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon / Middle English by a friend…

— Helene Hanff