Take a cat, nourish it well with milk
And tender meat, make it a couch of silk,
But let it see a mouse along the wall
And it abandones milk and meat and all.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Topics: Cats
People can die of mere imagination.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Topics: Imagination
My mind to me a kingdom is; such present joys therein I find, that it excels all other bliss that earth affords.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Topics: Mind
Go, little book; God send thee good passage, and specially let this be thy prayer, unto them all that thee will read or hear, where thou art wrong, after their help to call, thee to correct in any part, or all.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
First he wrought, and afterward he taught.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Topics: Teaching, Teachers
Of fortune’s sharp adversity, the worst kind of misfortune is this, that a man hath been in prosperity and it remembers when it passed is.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Topics: Misfortune
Love is blind.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Topics: Love
Idleness is the gate of all harms.—An idle man is like a house that hath no walls; the devils may enter on every side.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Topics: Idleness
He doth all things with sadness and with peevishness, slackness and excusation, with idleness and without good will.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Topics: Idleness
We know little of the things for which we pray.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Topics: Prayer
Abstinence is approved of God.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
By nature, men love newfangledness.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
The guilty think all talk is of themselves.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Topics: Guilt, One liners
Of all the floures in the mede,
Than love I most these floures white and rede,
Soch that men callen daisies in our toun.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Topics: Wisdom
Nowhere so busy a man as he than he, and yet he seemed busier than he was.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Topics: Work
Certes, they been lye to hounds, for an hound when he cometh by the roses, or by other bushes, though he may nat pisse, yet wole he heve up his leg and make a countenance to pisse.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Topics: Habits, Habit
Ye been oure lord, dooth with youre owene thyngRight as yow list.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
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Roger Bacon English Philosopher
Francis Bacon English Philosopher
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke English Politician