Petrarch Quotes
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If a hundred or a thousand people, all of the same age, of the same constitution and habits, were suddenly seized by the same illness, and one half of them were to place themselves under the care of doctors, such as they are in our time, whilst the other half entrusted themselves to Nature and to their own discretion, I have not the slightest doubt that there would be more cases of death amongst the former, and more cases of recovery among the latter.
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Often have I wondered with much curiosity as to our coming into this world and what will follow our departure.
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Mere elegance of language can produce at best but an empty renown.
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Virtue is health, vice is sickness.
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What name to call thee by, O virgin fair, I know not, for thy looks are not of earth And more than mortal seems thy countenances...
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A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.
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Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.
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Wanting is not enough, long and you attain it.
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Do you suppose there is any living man so unreasonable that if he found himself stricken with a dangerous ailment he would not anxiously desire to regain the blessing of health?
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For style beyond the genius never dares.
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I would have preferred to have been born in any other time than our own.
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It is better to will the good than to know the truth.
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I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worst pursue.
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Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
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Life in itself is short enough, but the physicians with their art, know to their amusement, how to make it still shorter.
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How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance.
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Those spacious regions where our fancies roam, Pain'd by the past, expecting ills to come, In some dread moment, by the fates assign'd, Shall pass away, nor leave a rack behind; And Time's revolving wheels shall lose at last The speed that spins the future and the past: And, sovereign of an undisputed throne, Awful eternity shall reign alone.
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Books have led some to learning and others to madness.
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I desire that death find me ready and writing, or if it please Christ, praying and intears.
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To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost every one is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds.
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The time will come when every change shall cease, This quick revolving wheel shall rest in peace: No summer then shall glow, not winter freeze; Nothing shall be to come, and nothing past, But an eternal now shall ever last.
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Man has not a greater enemy than himself.
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From thought to thought, from mountain peak to mountain. Love leads me on; for I can never still My trouble on the world's well beaten ways.
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For death betimes is comfort, not dismay, and who can rightly die needs no delay.