It was the hour of morning, when the sun mounts with those stars that shone with it when God's own love first set in motion those fair things

Open your mind to what I shall disclose, and hold it fast within you; he who hears, but does not hold what he has heard, learns nothing. Beatrice - Canto V 40-42

Mankind, why do ye set your hearts on things That, of necessity, may not be shared?

For where the instrument of intelligence is added to brute power and evil will, mankind is powerless in its own defense.

They yearn for what they fear for.

There is no greater pain than to remember, in our present grief, past happiness.

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.