Top 200 Geoffrey Chaucer Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Patience is a conquering virtue.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

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2. “All good things must come to an end.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

3. “Time and tide wait for no man.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

4. “Strike while the iron is hot.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

5. “Death is the end of every worldly pain.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

6. “Look up on high, and thank the God of all.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

7. “The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

8. “What is better than wisdom? Woman. And what is better than a good woman? Nothing.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

9. “Patience is a conquering virtue. The learned say that, if it not desert you, It vanquishes what force can never reach; Why answer back at every angry speech? No, learn forbearance or, I’ll tell you what, You will be taught it, whether you will or not.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

10. “If gold rusts, what then can iron do?”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

11. “Many a true word is spoken in jest.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

12. “The devil can only destroy those who are already on their way to damnation.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

13. “High in moral virtue was his speech, and gladly would he learn and gladly teach.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

14. “Many small make a great.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

15. “For out of old fields, as men saith, Cometh all this new corn from year to year; And out of old books, in good faith, Cometh all this new science that men learn.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

16. “In the stars is written the death of every man.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

17. “Nature, the vicar of the Almighty Lord.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

18. “In April the sweet showers fall And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all The veins are bathed in liquor of such power As brings about the engendering of the flower.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

19. “Great peace is found in little busy-ness.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

20. “No empty handed man can lure a bird.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

21. “Forbid us something, and that thing we desire.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

22. “People can die of mere imagination.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

23. “Whoso will pray, he must fast and be clean, And fat his soul, and make his body lean.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

24. “Hyt is not al golde that glareth.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

25. “He who accepts his poverty unhurt I’d say is rich although he lacked a shirt. But truly poor are they who whine and fret and covet what they cannot hope to get.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

26. “Women desire six things: They want their husbands to be brave, wise, rich, generous, obedient to wife, and lively in bed.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

27. “The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

28. “We know little of the things for which we pray.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

29. “Lost money is not lost beyond recall, But loss of time brings on the loss of all.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

30. “The man who has no wife is no cuckold.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

31. “Woe to the cook whose sauce has no sting.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

32. “First he wrought, and afterwards he taught.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

33. “He loved chivalrye Trouthe and honour, freedom and curteisye.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

34. “A whetstone is no carving instrument, And yet it maketh sharp the carving tool; And if you see my efforts wrongly spent, Eschew that course and learn out of my school; For thus the wise may profit by the fool, And edge his wit, and grow more keen and wary, For wisdom shines opposed to its contrary.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

35. “He that loveth God will do diligence to please God by his works, and abandon himself, with all his might, well for to do.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

36. “And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

37. “Nowhere so busy a man as he than he, and yet he seemed busier than he was.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

38. “For hym was levere have at his beddes heed Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed, Of Aristotle and his philosophie, Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

39. “There’s never a new fashion but it’s old.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

40. “It seems to me that poverty is an eyeglass through which one may see his true friends.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

41. “And she was fair as is the rose in May.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

42. “The latter end of joy is woe.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

43. “If love be good, from whence cometh my woe?”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

44. “A love grown old is not the love once new.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

45. “Love will not be constrain’d by mastery. When mast’ry comes, the god of love anon Beateth his wings, and, farewell, he is gone. Love is a thing as any spirit free.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

46. “Every honest miller has a golden thumb.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

47. “This flour of wifly patience.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

48. “Full is my heart of revelry and grace.” But suddenly he fell in grievous case; For ever the latter end of joy is woe. God knows that worldly joys do swiftly go; And if a rhetorician could but write, He in some chronicle might well indite And mark it down as sovereign in degree.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

49. “Truly, it is said, age has great advantage over youth. In age is both wisdom and experience. Youth may outrun the old, but not outwit.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer

50. “Yet in our ashen cold is fire yreken.”

— Geoffrey Chaucer