Geoffrey Chaucer — "And if that he forbede it, wolde he say, / 'A man may do no synne, but if he may…"
And if that he forbede it, wolde he say, / 'A man may do no synne, but if he may / Nat touche a womman, for al his lyf.'
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More from Geoffrey Chaucer
"'For shame,' she said, 'you timorous poltroon! Alas, what cowardice!'"
"For whoso wol no wyf, he is no man."
"The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, Th'assay so hard, so sharp the conquerynge, The dredful joye, alwey that slit so yerne: Al this mene I by love."
"Ther is no difference, by my fey, Bitwixe a wys man and a fool, but this: The fool is glad, and the wys man is sorweful."
"She koude muchel of wandrynge by the weye. / Gat-tothed was she, soothly for to seye."
About Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)
English poet, civil servant, and the father of English literature; The Canterbury Tales (~1387-1400) is the founding text of English-language storytelling. Closely associated with Giovanni Boccaccio (his Italian predecessor; the Decameron preceded the Canterbury Tales by ~40 years). For an intellectual contrast, see John Wycliffe, English theologian and Lollard reform-movement leader — Wycliffe and Chaucer were near-contemporaries in the same English Christian world — Chaucer's Wife of Bath and Pardoner are the canonical literary defense of fleshly humanity against the Lollard moral austerity that would later become English Puritanism. Earthy storytelling vs proto-Protestant moralism.