Marie de France Quotes

But sweetly and discreetly love passes from person to person, from heart to heart, or it is nothing worth.

You have to endure what you can’t change.

If one of two lovers is loyal, and the other jealous and false, how may their friendship last, for Love is slain!

Desire can blind us to the hazards of our enterprises.

There are divers men who make a great show of loyalty, and pretend to such discretion in the hidden things they hear, that at the end folk come to put faith in them.

Be sure that you speak with unfeigned lips.

Fairest and dearest, your wrath and anger are more heavy than I can bear; but learn that I cannot tell what you wish me to say without sinning against my honour too grievously.

Out of five hundred who speak glibly of love, not one can spell the first letter of his name.

Whosoever counts these Lays as fable, may be assured that I am not of his mind.

Whoever has received knowledge
and eloquence in speech from God
should not be silent or secretive
but demonstrate it willingly.
When a great good is widely heard of,
then, and only then, does it bloom,
and when that good is praised by man,
it has spread its blossoms.

He who would tell divers tales must know how to vary the tune.

In times gone by there lived a Count of Ponthieu, who loved chivalry and the pleasures of the world beyond measure, and moreover was a stout knight and a gallant gentleman

Great were the lamentation and the cry when the news of this mischance was noised about the city. Such a tumult of mourning was never before heard, for the whole city was moved.

By men’s words we know them.

A bully is not reasonable – he is persuaded only by threats.

For what the lover would, that would the beloved; what she would ask of him that should he go before to grant. Without accord such as this, love is but a bond and a constraint.

The dead and past stories that I have told again in divers fashions, are not set down without authority.

The fool shouts loudly, thinking to impress the world.

We love what we should scorn if we were wiser.

I love no woman, for love is a serious business, not a jest.