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Who really said it

Patience is a conquering virtue

Written by Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer c. 1343–1400 · English poet, author of The Canterbury Tales
Verified In copyright

The line comes from Chaucer’s “The Franklin’s Tale,” where the narrator praises patience in marriage. Chaucer’s own Middle English reads “Pacience is an heigh vertu, certeyn” — literally ‘a high virtue.’ The catchy “conquering virtue” is Nevill Coghill’s 1951 verse translation ↗, which reaches for the sense of the next line, “For it venquysseth…” (‘for it vanquishes’).

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Patience is a conquering virtue” Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Franklin's Tale," The Canterbury Tales (trans. Nevill Coghill, Penguin Classics, 1951)

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Nevill Coghill’s estate and Penguin Books (Penguin Random House)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Geoffrey Chaucer — English poet & royal servant, the 'Father of English literature'. Theme: "Patience is a conquering virtue". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

The source

Work
The Canterbury Tales — “The Franklin’s Tale”
Written
c. 1387–1400, in Middle English
Translation
Nevill Coghill, Penguin Classics, 1951
Original line
“Pacience is an heigh vertu, certeyn”

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.

Chaucer’s Middle English original: “Pacience is an heigh vertu, certeyn, / For it venquysseth, as thise clerkes seyn, / Thynges that rigour sholde nevere atteyne.”

Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale, side-by-side with Coghill

How we know

In copyright

The Middle English text of “The Franklin’s Tale” (c. 1400) has been in the public domain for centuries. But the exact English wording quoted here is Nevill Coghill’s verse translation, first published in Penguin Classics in 1951 and still under copyright — so this specific phrasing is not free to reuse.

Fact-check

The wording isn’t Chaucer’s

Crediting the line to Chaucer is essentially right — the thought and the source really are his. What gets lost is that the famous four-word English phrasing was written not by Chaucer but by his modern translator.

Geoffrey Chaucer Translator, not the poet

Chaucer wrote Middle English: “Pacience is an heigh vertu, certeyn” — ‘patience is a high virtue.’ The snappy “conquering virtue” is Nevill Coghill’s 1951 translation choice ↗, reaching forward to the next line’s “For it venquysseth” (‘for it vanquishes’).

The idea and the source are genuinely Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale ↗; the memorable phrasing belongs to his 20th-century translator, Nevill Coghill ↗.

Context

Why it matters

In “The Franklin’s Tale,” Chaucer’s narrator argues that a lasting marriage depends on patience: each partner must learn to endure the other’s faults, because “patience” wins what anger and force never can. It is one of the tale’s central moral threads.

The passage is a neat case study in how quotes travel. Chaucer’s hard-to-read Middle English is smoothed into a rhyming couplet by a translator, the translation becomes the ‘quote,’ and the translator’s name drops away — leaving readers to assume a medieval poet wrote a line no medieval reader ever saw.

Chaucer supplied the thought; Coghill supplied the words.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Resilience

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Franklin’s Tale (Middle English)umilta.net

Chaucer’s original text, including “Pacience is an heigh vertu, certeyn.”
Coghill translation, side-by-sideclassicalcarousel.com

Shows Coghill’s “Patience is a conquering virtue” beside the Middle English.
Coghill’s Canterbury Tales (1951)archive.org

First Penguin Classics edition of Nevill Coghill’s translation.
The Franklin’s Prologue and Talechaucer.fas.harvard.edu

Harvard’s scholarly edition of the tale in Middle English with glosses.
Geoffrey Chaucer (Wikiquote)en.wikiquote.org

Sourced Chaucer quotations for cross-checking attributions.

The author

About Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer

c. 1343–1400 · English poet & royal servant, the ‘Father of English literature’

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343–1400) was an English poet, courtier and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales, an unfinished set of stories told by pilgrims bound for Canterbury. Writing in the Middle English of his day, he helped make the vernacular a serious literary language. Because that verse is now hard to read, most modern readers meet him through translations — which is exactly how the wording of this quote came about.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Franklin’s Tale,” in The Canterbury Tales, trans. Nevill Coghill (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1951). Middle English original: “Pacience is an heigh vertu, certeyn.”

MLA (9th ed.)

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Franklin’s Tale.” The Canterbury Tales, translated by Nevill Coghill, Penguin Classics, 1951.

APA (7th ed.)

Chaucer, G. (1951). The Canterbury Tales (N. Coghill, Trans.). Penguin Classics. (Original work published c. 1387–1400)

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Patience is a conquering virtue’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/patience-is-a-conquering-virtue

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