Chrétien de Troyes

"Qua toz mangiers est sausse fains Bien destanpree et bien confite."

"Bien pert que cest aprés mangier, Fet Kex, qui teire ne se pot Plus a paroles an plain pot De vin quan un mui de cervoise."

"Par le sornon connoist on lome."

"Amors sanz crieme et sans peor Est feus sanz flame et sanz chalor, Jorz sanz soloil, bresche sanz miel, Estez sans flor, iverz sanz giel, Ciaus sanz lune, livres sanz letre."

"Joie damors qui vient a tart Sanble la vert busche qui art, Qui dedanz rant plus grant chalor Et plus se tient en sa valor, Quant plus demore a alumer."

"Que molt est malvais qui oblie Son li fait honte ne laidure."

"Nus ne puet estre trop parliers Qui sovent tel chose ne die Qui torné li est affolie, Car li sages dit et retrait: Qui trop parole, il se mesfait."

"Our books have informed us that the pre-eminence in chivalry and learning once belonged to Greece. Then chivalry passed to Rome, together with that highest learning which now has come to France. God grant that it may be cherished here, and that it may be made so welcome here that the honour which has taken refuge with us may never depart from France: God had awarded it as anothers share, but of Greeks and Romans no more is heard, their fame is passed, and their glowing ash is dead."

"He was one of the first explorers of the human heart, and is therefore rightly to be numbered among the fathers of the novel of sentiment."

"Qui baise feme et plus ni fait, Des quil sont sol a sol andui, Dont quit je quil remaint en lui. Feme qui se bouche abandone Le sorplus molt de legier done."

"Chrétien is nothing if not versatile: popular, recherché, allusive, insistent, arch, naïve, racy and demure...He has a dramatists flair for the handling of dialogue, a deft and economic way with characterization, the sharp confidence of the logician in his handling of rhetorical figures and the self-assurance of the entertainer in the deployment of humour (he is master of the verbal nudge). It is his essential vivacity that one misses most in his imitators."