Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his… — John Greenleaf Whittier Copy Share Image
I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the… — Ezra Pound Copy Share Image
We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit.... But though it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not transcendent… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Purists behave as if there was a vintage year when language achieved a measure of excellence which we should all strive to… — Jean Aitchison Copy Share Image
The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet… — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
The church itself has got to go outside of its own borders and carry the gospel to ev'ry creature, or it is… — Edward Everett Hale Copy Share Image
“Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales was expected to clock in at anywhere between 100 and 120 chapters. Unfortunately, the dude only managed to… — Jacopo della Quercia Copy Share Image
On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon / Middle English by… — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
Of course I didn't pioneer the use of food in fiction: it has been a standard literary device since Chaucer and Rabelais,… — Joanne Harris Copy Share Image
We possess the Canon because we are mortal and also rather belated. There is only so much time, and time must have… — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
In one particular chapter in Ulysses, James Joyce imitates every major writing style that's been used by English and American writers over… — Frederick Lenz Copy Share Image
Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare , rise; I will not lodge thee by… — Ben Jonson Copy Share Image
Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontes and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,On Fames eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled. — Edmund Spenser Copy Share Image
First impressions of mediaeval life are usually coloured by the courtly romances of Malory and his later refiners. Chaucer brings us down… — William Langland Copy Share Image
Chaucer followed Nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her. — John Dryden Copy Share Image
In the final exam in the Chaucer course we were asked why he used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Reading Chaucer is like brushing through the dewy grass at sunrise. — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image
If you read only the best, you will have no need of reading the other books, because the latter are nothing but… — Anna Brackett Copy Share Image
Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer Said once about the long toil that goes like blood to the poems making? Leave it… — R. S. Thomas Copy Share Image
The slight, the facile and the merely self-glorifying tend to drop away over the centuries, and what we are left with is… — Wendy Lesser Copy Share Image
I shall write a book some day about the appropriateness of names. Geoffrey Chaucer has a ribald ring, as is proper and… — James Joyce Copy Share Image
The true use of Shakespeare or of Cervantes, of Homer or of Dante, of Chaucer or of Rabelais, is to augment one's… — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
