Geoffrey Chaucer Quotes

“All good things must come to an end.”

“And if love is, what thing and which is he? If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo?”

“And once he had got really drunk on wine, then he would speak no language but Latin.”

“By God, if women had written stories,
As clerks had within here oratories,
They would have written of men more wickedness
Than all the mark of Adam may redress.”

“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.”

“Forbid us something and that thing we desire.”

“How potent is the fancy! People are so impressionable, they can die of imagination.”

“I know that my singing doesn’t make the moon rise, nor does it make the stars shine. But without my song, the night would seem empty and incomplete. There is more to daybreak than light, just as there is more to nighttime than darkness.”

“I'll die for stifled love, by all that's true.”

“If gold rust, what then will iron do? For if a priest be foul in whom we trust no wonder that a common man should rust.”

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Expierience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”

“Love conquers all.”

“Lust is addicted to novelty.”

“Many a true word is spoken in jest.”

“Mercy surpasses justice.”

“Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained”

“One flesh they are; and one flesh, so I'd guess,
Has but one heart, come grief or happiness.”

“Patience is a conquering virtue.”

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

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

“The guilty think all talk is of themselves.”

“The life so brief, the art so long in the learning, the attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp, the fearful joy that ever slips away so quickly ? by all this I mean love, which so sorely astounds my feeling with its wondrous operation, that when I think upon it I scarce know whether I wake or sleep.”

“Time and tide wait for no man.”

“We’re like two dogs in battle on their own;
They fought all day but neither got the bone,
There came a kite above them, nothing loth,
And while they fought he took it from them both.”

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

“You are the cause by which I die.”

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

“And high above, depicted in a tower, sat Conquest, robed in majesty and power, under a sword that swung above his head, sharp-edged and hanging by a subtle thread.”

“And shame it is, if that a priest take keep, To see a shitten shepherd and clean sheep.”

“Be nat wrooth, my lord, though that I pleye. Ful ofte in game a sooth I have herd seye!”