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Christine de Pisan

  • ... I have lost the one who makes me own / the memory of pain with which I am obsessed. / Gone are the days of joy I once possessed. / With poison herbs my hard terrain is sewn. / I am a widow, robed in black, alone.

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • 1390, in Aliki Barnstone and Willis Barnstone, eds., A Book of Women Poets From Antiquity to Now ()
  • ... poetry's object is truth ...

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • 1405, in Charity Cannon Willard, Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works ()
  • I've chosen now for all my joy / My life in study to employ. / With peace and chosen solitude, / A studious world makes my life good.

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • 1403, in Charity Cannon Willard, Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works ()
  • ... it is a deed of greater charity to give a bit of bread to the poor in the time of high prices and famine, than a whole loaf in the time of fertility and abundance ...

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • letter to Queen Isabella of France (1405), in Josette A. Wisman, trans., The Epistle of the Prison of Human Life ()
  • Oh, would that men, since it would indeed please God, had not, on either side, the courage to bear arms!

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • "Lament on the Evils of the Civil War" (1410), in Josette A. Wisman, trans., The Epistle of the Prison of Human Life ()
  • ... if it has to be that wars and battles are begun for many reasons and quarrels, then they should also be avoided and shunned by better and more valid reasons ...

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • "Lament on the Evils of the Civil War" (1410), in Josette A. Wisman, trans., The Epistle of the Prison of Human Life ()
  • Only the dead fail to reach out with both hands.

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • "Le livre des trois vertus" (1405), in Charity Cannon Willard, trans., and Madeleine Pelner Cosman, ed., A Medieval Woman's Mirror of Honor ()
  • Do not let the bread of the hungry mildew in your larder! Do not let moths eat the poor man's cloak. Do not store the shoes of the barefoot. Do not hoard the money of the needy. Things you possess in too great abundance belong to the poor and not to you. You are the thief who steals from God if you are able to help your neighbor and refuse to do it.

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • "Le livre des trois vertus" (1405), in Charity Cannon Willard, trans., and Madeleine Pelner Cosman, ed., A Medieval Woman's Mirror of Honor ()
  • Not the bite of a serpent, nor the blow of a sword, nor any other sharp thrust was ever as dangerous as the tongue of an envious person.

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • "Le livre des trois vertus" (1405), in Charity Cannon Willard, trans., and Madeleine Pelner Cosman, ed., A Medieval Woman's Mirror of Honor ()
  • ... he's excused, she's named and she's accused.

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • "Letter of the God of Love" (1399), in Thelma S. Fenster and Mary Carpenter Erler, eds., Poems of Cupid, God of Love ()
  • ... books were not composed / By women, nor did they record the things / That we may read against them and their ways. / Yet men write on, quite to their heart's content, / The ones who plead their case without debate. / They give no quarter, take the winner's part / Themselves, for readily do quarrelers / Attack all those who don't defend themselves. / If women, though, had written all those books, / I know that they would read quite differently, / For well do women know the blame is wrong. / The parts are not apportioned equally, / Because the strongest take the largest cut / And he who slices it can keep the best.

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • "Letter of the God of Love" (1399), in Thelma S. Fenster and Mary Carpenter Erler, eds., Poems of Cupid, God of Love ()
  • Without a woman, he who's natural / Is sad, for she's his mother, sister, love. / And rarely is she enemy to him.

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • "Letter of the God of Love" (1399), in Thelma S. Fenster and Mary Carpenter Erler, eds., Poems of Cupid, God of Love ()
  • ... the man who slurs / Some other man is guiltier / Of just the same misdeed, I'm sure, / That he maintains the other is.

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • "Tale of the Rose" (1402), in Thelma S. Fenster and Mary Carpenter Erler, eds., Poems of Cupid, God of Love ()
  • ... there is no fire without smoke but there is often smoke without fire.

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • 1404, in Thelma S. Fenster and Nadia Margolis, trans., The Book of the Duke of True Lovers ()
  • For knowledge and diligence / Are required to versify, / To conjoin and diversify / Many subjects various ...

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • 1404, in Thelma S. Fenster and Nadia Margolis, trans., The Book of the Duke of True Lovers ()
  • A woman with a mind is fit for any task.

    • Christine de Pisan
  • But just the sight of this book ... made me wonder how it happened that so many different men — and learned men among them — have been and are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many devilish and wicked thoughts about women and their behavior.

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • 1405, in Earl Jeffrey Richards, trans., The Book of the City of Ladies ()
  • The man or the woman in whom resides greater virtue is the higher; neither the loftiness nor the lowliness of a person lies in the body according to the sex, but in the perfection of conduct and virtues.

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • 1405, in Earl Jeffrey Richards, trans., The Book of the City of Ladies ()
  • ... men maintain that the mind of women can learn only a little. ... if it were customary to send daughters to school like sons, and if they were then taught the natural sciences, they would learn as thoroughly and understand the subtleties of all the arts and sciences as well as sons.

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • 1405, in Earl Jeffrey Richards, trans., The Book of the City of Ladies ()
  • I am ... troubled and grieved when men argue that many women want to be raped and that it does not bother them at all to be raped by men even when they verbally protest. It would be hard to believe that such great villainy is actually pleasant for them.

    • Christine de Pisan,
    • 1405, in Earl Jeffrey Richards, trans., The Book of the City of Ladies ()

Christine de Pisan, French writer

(1364 - 1430)

Also seen as Christine de Pizan.