Dante Alighieri Quotes
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Perceive ye not that we are worms, designed To form the angelic butterfly, that goes To judgment, leaving all defence behind? Why doth your mind take such exalted pose, Since ye, disabled, are as insects, mean As worm which never transformation knows?
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O power of fantasy that steals our minds from things outside, to leave us unaware, although a thousand trumpets may blow loud--what stirs you if the senses show you nothing? Light stirs you, formed in Heaven, by itself, or by His will Who sends it down to us.
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Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving, seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly, that, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me.
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He is not always at ease who laughs.
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The human race is in the best condition when it has the greatest degree of liberty.
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If i thought i was replying to someone who would every return to the world, this flame would cease it's flickering. But since no one has returned from these depths alive, if what I've heard is true, I will answer you without fear of infamy.
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There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, and sand eddies in a whirlwind.
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E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle" ("and thence we came forth to see again the stars")
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Abandon every hope, you who enter.
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For where the instrument of intelligence is added to brute power and evil will, mankind is powerless in its own defense.
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We are but a day in this world, and in that day the fashion is changed a thousand times: all seek liberty, yet all deprive themselves of it.
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The human race finds itself in a better situation when it has the higher level of freedom.
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I, answering in the end, began: 'Alas, how many yearning thoughts, what great desire, have lead them through such sorrow to their fate?
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Ah! Justice of our God! Who else could stow Such travails new and pains as met my glance!
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Here we find the moat of thieves. And just as a lizard, with a quick, slick slither, Flicks across the highway from hedge to hedge, Fleeter than a flash, in the battering dog-day weather, A fiery little monster, livid, in a rage, Black as any peppercorn, came and made a dart At the guts of the others, and leaping to engage One of the pair, it pierced him at the part Through which we first draw food; then loosed its grip And fell before him, outstretched and apart.
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Honor is the greatest poet.
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Oh foolish desires of mortals! How weak are the reasons that lead us to not take off our flight from the ground.
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I was so full of sleep at the time that I left the true way.
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Fame is not won on downy plumes nor under canopies; the man who consumes his days without obtaining it leaves such mark of himself on earth as smoke in air or foam on water.
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This sorrow weighs upon the melancholy souls of those who lived without infamy or praise.
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In that part of the book of my memory before the which is little that can be read, there is a rubric, saying, Incipit Vita Nova. Under such rubric I find written many things; and among them the words which I purpose to copy into this little book; if not all of them, at the least their substance.
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I affirm that gain is precisely that which comes oftener to the bad man than to the good; for illegitimate gains never come to the good at all, because they reject them. And lawful gains rarely come to the good, because, since much anxious care is needful thereto, and the anxious care of the good man is directed to weightier matters, rarely does the good man give sufficient attention thereto. Wherefore it is clear that in every way the advent of these riches is iniquitous.
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The man who lies asleep will never waken fame.
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I made my own house be my gallows.