Chaucer Quotes

23 quotes by 21 authors

Purists behave as if there was a vintage year when language achieved a measure of excellence which we should all strive to maintain. In fact,… — Jean Aitchison
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 its… — George Saintsbury
The slight, the facile and the merely self-glorifying tend to drop away over the centuries, and what we are left with is the bedrock: Homer… — Wendy Lesser
The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything. — William Hazlitt
And Chaucer, with his infantine Familiar clasp of things divine. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but… — Henry David Thoreau
I have an unconscious burglar living in my mind: If I read something, it's mine. I can read Middle English stories, Geoffrey Chaucer or Sir… — David Eddings
I shall write a book some day about the appropriateness of names. Geoffrey Chaucer has a ribald ring, as is proper and correct, and Alexander… — James Joyce
No poem, not even Shakespeare or Milton or Chaucer, is ever strong enough to totally exclude every crucial precursor text or poem. — Harold Bloom
The story of Ulysses and Agamemnon and Menelaus, of Jesus, of the Good Knight of Chaucer, lives in every one of us. — James Lee Burke
The quiet tenderness of Chaucer, where you almost seem to hear the hot tears falling, and the simple choking words sobbed out. — James Russell Lowell
Chaucer followed Nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her. — John Dryden
The worshipful father and first founder and embellisher of ornate eloquence in our English, I mean Master Geoffrey Chaucer. — William Caxton
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
Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare , rise; I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spenser… — Ben Jonson
Of course I didn't pioneer the use of food in fiction: it has been a standard literary device since Chaucer and Rabelais, who used food… — Joanne Harris
I have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon / Middle English by a friend who… — Helene Hanff
I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is… — Mark Twain
Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good… — Ezra Pound
In the final exam in the Chaucer course we were asked why he used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave… — Madeleine L'Engle

Who Wrote These Chaucer Quotes

21 authors contributed a total of 23 Chaucer Quotes as follows: