Top 80 Edmund Spenser Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne.”

— Edmund Spenser

52. “There is no disputing about taste.”

— Edmund Spenser

53. “Through knowledge we behold the world’s creation, How in his cradle first he fostered was; And judge of Nature’s cunning operation, How things she formed of a formless mass.”

— Edmund Spenser

54. “All flesh doth frailty breed!”

— Edmund Spenser

55. “This iron world bungs down the stoutest hearts to lowest state; for misery doth bravest minds abate.”

— Edmund Spenser

56. “Laws ought to be fashioned unto the manners and conditions of the people whom they are meant to benefit, and not imposed upon them according to the simple rule of right.”

— Edmund Spenser

57. “The paynefull smith, with force of fervent heat, The hardest yron soone doth mollify, That with his heavy sledge he can it beat, And fashion it to what he it list apply.”

— Edmund Spenser

58. “Gold all is not that doth golden seem.”

— Edmund Spenser

59. “Fretting grief the enemy of life.”

— Edmund Spenser

60. “Hark, how the cheerful birds do chaunt their lays, and carol of love’s praise.”

— Edmund Spenser

61. “It often falls, in course of common life, that right long time is overborne of wrong.”

— Edmund Spenser

62. “Nothing under heaven so strongly doth allure the sense of man, and all his mind possess, as beauty’s love.”

— Edmund Spenser

63. “Hasty wrath and heedless hazardy do breed repentance late and lasting infamy.”

— Edmund Spenser

64. “Foul jealousy! that turnest love divine to joyless dread, and makest the loving heart with hateful thoughts to languish and to pine.”

— Edmund Spenser

65. “Change still doth reign, and keep the greater sway.”

— Edmund Spenser

66. “Together linkt with adamantine chains.”

— Edmund Spenser

67. “The fish once caught, new bait will hardly bite.”

— Edmund Spenser

68. “Man’s wretched state, That floures so fresh at morne, and fades at evening late.”

— Edmund Spenser

69. “Men, when their actions succeed not as they would, are always ready to impute the blame thereof to heaven, so as to excuse their own follies.”

— Edmund Spenser

70. “Fly from wrath; sad be the sights and bitter fruits of war; a thousand furies wait on wrathful swords.”

— Edmund Spenser

71. “A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine.”

— Edmund Spenser

72. “For since mine eyes your joyous sight did miss, my cheerful day is turned to cheerless night.”

— Edmund Spenser

73. “But as it falleth, in the gentlest hearts Imperious love hath highest set his throne, And tyrannizeth in the bitter smarts Of them, that to him buxom are and prone.”

— Edmund Spenser

74. “The ever-whirling wheele Of Change, to which all mortal things doth sway.”

— Edmund Spenser

75. “Oft stumbles at a straw.”

— Edmund Spenser

76. “No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd, No arborett with painted blossoms drest And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al arownd.”

— Edmund Spenser

77. “Greatest god below the sky.”

— Edmund Spenser

78. “For take thy ballaunce if thou be so wise, And weigh the winds that under heaven doth blow; Or weigh the light that in the east doth rise; Or weigh the thought that from man’s mind doth flow.”

— Edmund Spenser

79. “And thus of all my harvest-hope I have Nought reaped but a weedye crop of care.”

— Edmund Spenser

80. “And through the hall there walked to and fro A jolly yeoman, marshall of the same, Whose name was Appetite; he did bestow Both guestes and meate, whenever in they came, And knew them how to order without blame.”

— Edmund Spenser

81. “How many perils doe enfold The righteous man to make him daily fall.”

— Edmund Spenser

82. “Woe to the man that first did teach the cursed steel to bite in his own flesh, and make way to the living spirit!”

— Edmund Spenser

83. “O happy earth, Whereon thy innocent feet doe ever tread!”

— Edmund Spenser