Dante Alighieri Quotes

Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

And when he had put his hand on mine with a cheerful look, wherefrom I took courage, he brought me within to the secret things. Here sighs, laments, and deep wailings were resounding through the starless air; wherefore at first I wept thereat. Strange tongues, horrible utterances, words of woe, accents of anger, voices high and faint, and sounds of hands with them, were making a tumult which whirls always in that air forever dark, like the sand when the whirlwind breathes.

As little flowers, which the chill of night has bent and huddled, when the white sun strikes, grow straight and open fully on their stems, so did I, too, with my exhausted force.

There, pride, avarice, and envy are the tongues men know and heed, a Babel of depsair

No man may be so cursed by priest or pope but what the Eternal Love may still return while any thread of green lives on in hope.

These have not the hope to die.

He who shall never be divided from me kissed my mouth all trembling.

O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?

A man's renown is like the hue of grass, Which comes and goes.

All your renown is like the summer flower that blooms and dies; because the sunny glow which brings it forth, soon slays with parching power.

The man who lies asleep will never waken fame.

Thy soul is by vile fear assailed, which oft so overcasts a man, that he recoils from noblest resolution, like a beast at some false semblance in the twilight gloom.

Pure essence, and pure matter, and the two joined into one were shot forth without flaw, like three bright arrows from a three-string bow.

When I had journeyed half of our life's way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray.

There is a place in Hell called the Malebolge.

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.

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.

That which had pleased me once, troubled by spirit.

Deed done is well begun.

I care not where my body may take me as long as my soul is embarked on a meaningful journey.

But the stars that marked our starting fall away. We must go deeper into greater pain, for it is not permitted that we stay.

Will cannot be quenched against its will.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Be as a tower firmly set; Shakes not its top for any blast that blows.

Beauty awakens the soul to act.

O mortal men, be wary of how ye judge.

You shall leave everything you love.

You can stay and die or you can walk your ugly ass back through that gate. It's your call, pal.

A prayer may chance to rise From one whose heart lives in the grace of God. A prayer from any other is unheeded.

Lying in a featherbed will bring you no fame, nor staying beneath the quilt, and he who uses up his life without achieving fame leaves no more vestige of himself on Earth than smoke in the air or foam upon the water.

Love insists the loved loves back

From a small spark, Great flame has risen.

I made my own house be my gallows.

They had their faces twisted toward their haunches and found it necessary to walk backward, because they could not see ahead of them. ...And since he wanted so to see ahead, he looks behind and walks a backward path.

There's not the least thing can be said or done, but people will talk and find fault.

Fate's arrow, when expected, travels slow.

Pride, envy, avarice - these are the sparks have set on fire the hearts of all men.

He listens well who takes notes.

The heaven that rolls around cries aloud to you while it displays its eternal beauties, and yet your eyes are fixed upon the earth alone.

Thus you may understand that love alone is the true seed of every merit in you, and of all acts for which you must atone.

Oh foolish desires of mortals! How weak are the reasons that lead us to not take off our flight from the ground.

There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, and sand eddies in a whirlwind.