Petrarch Quotes
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For though I am a body of this earth, my firm desire is born from the stars.
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Often on earth the gentlest heart is fain To feed and banquet on another's woe.
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To be able to say how much love, is love but little.
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For style beyond the genius never dares.
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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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A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.
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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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When the poet died his cat was put to death and mummified.
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It is better to will the good than to know the truth.
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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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Wanting is not enough, long and you attain it.
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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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I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worst pursue.
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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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Books have led some to learning and others to madness.
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While life is in your body, you have the rein of all thoughts in your hands.
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The end of doubt is the beginning of repose.
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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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Hitherto your eyes have been darkened and you have looked too much, yes, far too much, upon the things of earth. If these so much delight you what shall be your rapture when you lift your gaze to things eternal!
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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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I would have preferred to have been born in any other time than our own.
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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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For death betimes is comfort, not dismay, and who can rightly die needs no delay.
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Man has not a greater enemy than himself.