Petrarch Quotes
-
All pleasure in the world is a passing dream.
-
A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.
-
There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen. Other pleasures fail us or wound us while they charm, but the pen we take up rejoicing and lay down with satisfaction, for it has the power to advantage not only its lord and master, but many others as well, even though they be far away - sometimes, indeed, though they be not born for thousands of years to come.
-
Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.
-
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...
-
Virtue is health, vice is sickness.
-
Mere elegance of language can produce at best but an empty renown.
-
I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worst pursue.
-
Often have I wondered with much curiosity as to our coming into this world and what will follow our departure.
-
How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance.
-
It is better to will the good than to know the truth.
-
I would have preferred to have been born in any other time than our own.
-
Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
-
Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.
-
Life in itself is short enough, but the physicians with their art, know to their amusement, how to make it still shorter.
-
For style beyond the genius never dares.
-
I desire that death find me ready and writing, or if it please Christ, praying and intears.
-
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.
-
Books have led some to learning and others to madness.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Man has not a greater enemy than himself.
-
For death betimes is comfort, not dismay, and who can rightly die needs no delay.