Petrarch Quotes
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It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.
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Who naught suspects is easily deceived.
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Hope is incredible to the slave of grief.
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Books come at my call and return when I desire them; they are never out of humor and they answer all my questions with readiness. Some present in review before me the events of past ages; others reveal to me the secrets of Nature. These teach me how to live, and those how to die; these dispel my melancholy by their mirth, and amuse me by their sallies of wit. Some there are who prepare my soul to suffer everything, to desire nothing, and to become thoroughly acquainted with itself. In a word, they open the door to all the arts and sciences.
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And I live on, but in grief and self-contempt, Left here without the light I loved so much, In a great tempest and with shrouds unkempt.
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I had got this far, and was thinking of what to say next, and as my habit is, I was pricking the paper idly with my pen. And I thought how, between one dip of the pen and the next, time goes on, and I hurry, drive myself, and speed toward death. We are always dying. I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or stop their ears, they are all dying.
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Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.
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And tears are heard within the harp I touch.
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Man has no greater enemy than himself. I have acted contrary to my sentiments and inclination; throughout our whole lives we do what we never intended, and what we proposed to do, we leave undone.
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You keep to your own ways and leave mine to me.
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Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage.
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Whyle I was abowte to chaunge myn olde lyff-- What sorowe I suffered, dyseese, angre and stryff, Cracchynge myn here, my chekys all totare, Wrythynge my fyngres for angwysshe and care, Watrynge the erthe with my byttre salte teres That the crye of my syghes ascended to Goddys eres, My knees with myn handys grasped togedyre soore, And yitt I stode the same man I was afore Tyl a depe profounde remembraunce att the laste Hadd all my wrecchednesse afore myn eyn caste...
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Books never pall on me. They discourse with us, they take counsel with us, and are united to us by a certain living chatty familiarity. And not only does each book inspire the sense that it belongs to its readers, but it also suggests the name of others, and one begets the desire of the other.
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Great errors seldom originate but with men of great minds.
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My flowery and green age was passing away, and I feeling a chill in the fires had been wasting my heart, for I was drawing near the hillside above the grave.
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I have friends whose society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of all ages; distinguished in war, in council, and in letters; easy to live with, always at my command.
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The aged love what is practical while impetuous youth longs only for what is dazzling.
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Nothing mortal is enduring, and there is nothing sweet which does not presently end in bitterness.
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Ruthless striving, overcomes everything.
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How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!
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Death had his grudge against me, and he got up in the way, like an armed robber, with a pike in his hand.
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Where you are is of no moment, but only what you are doing there. It is not the place that ennobles you, but you the place, and this only by doing that which is great and noble.
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Reality is always the foe of famous names.
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How quick the old woe follows a little bliss!