Dante Alighieri Quotes
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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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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 is the source of every virtue in you and of every deed which deserves punishment.
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But if, as morning rises, dreams are true.
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He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it.
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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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This miserable way is taken by the sorry souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise. They now commingle with the coward angels, the company of those who were not rebels nor faithful to their God, but stood apart. The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened, have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them - even the wicked cannot glory in them.
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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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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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Deed done is well begun.
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I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightfoward pathway had been lost. Ah me! How hard a thing is to say, what was this forest savage, rough, and stern, which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is little more.
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I made my own house be my gallows.
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And here Dante describes an evidently spherical world... "The lamp of the world the sun rises to mortals through different passages; but through that which joins four circles with three crosses the position of the rising sun at the vernal equinox it issues with a better course and conjoined with better stars, and tempers and stamps the wax of the world more after its own fashion. Although such an outlet had made morning there and evening here, and all the hemisphere there was bright, and the other dark..."
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The well heeded well heard.
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The path to paradise begins in hell.
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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 was so full of sleep at the time that I left the true way.
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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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As little flowers, which the chill of night has bent and huddled, when the white sun strikes, grow straight and open fully on their stems, so did I, too, with my exhausted force.
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I felt for the tormented whirlwinds Damned for their carnal sins Committed when they let their passions rule their reason.
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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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Here pity only lives when it is dead - Virgil
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Still desiring, we live without hope.
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Justice divine has weighed: the doom is clear. All hope renounce, ye lost, who enter here.