Geoffrey Chaucer — "The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, Th'assay so hard, so sharp the con…"
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, Th'assay so hard, so sharp the conquerynge.
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More from Geoffrey Chaucer
"He knew hir conseil, and hir pryvetee, And for to been a maister of his craft, Ful ofte hadde this man bigiled his maister."
"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."
"He knew the cause of every maladye, / Were it of hoot, or coold, or moyste, or drye, / And where engendred, and of what humour."
"What sholde I speke of the synne of glotonye, that is so greet a synne?"
"For though the lyon be a beest, He hath a herte of gold, and that is al."
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.