Petrarch Quotes

Love is the crowning grace of humanity.

For though I am a body of this earth, my firm desire is born from the stars.

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

How quick the old woe follows a little bliss!

Suspicion is the cancer of friendship.

Nothing mortal is enduring, and there is nothing sweet which does not presently end in bitterness.

The end of doubt is the beginning of repose.

I have friends whose society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of all ages; distinguished in war, in council, and in letters; easy to live with, always at my command.

Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.

Books come at my call and return when I desire them; they are never out of humor and they answer all my questions with readiness. Some present in review before me the events of past ages; others reveal to me the secrets of Nature. These teach me how to live, and those how to die; these dispel my melancholy by their mirth, and amuse me by their sallies of wit. Some there are who prepare my soul to suffer everything, to desire nothing, and to become thoroughly acquainted with itself. In a word, they open the door to all the arts and sciences.

Events appear sad, pleasant, or painful, not because they are so in reality, but because we believe them to be so and the light in which we look at them depends upon our own judgment.

I had got this far, and was thinking of what to say next, and as my habit is, I was pricking the paper idly with my pen. And I thought how, between one dip of the pen and the next, time goes on, and I hurry, drive myself, and speed toward death. We are always dying. I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or stop their ears, they are all dying.

I desire that death find me ready and writing, or if it please Christ, praying and intears.

Man has not a greater enemy than himself.

I saw the tracks of angels in the earth: the beauty of heaven walking by itself on the world.

How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.

Hope is incredible to the slave of grief.

When the poet died his cat was put to death and mummified.

While life is in your body, you have the rein of all thoughts in your hands.

A good death does honour to a whole life.

The greater I am, the greater shall be my efforts.

Who over-refines his argument brings himself to grief

Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.

Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage.

A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.

Often on earth the gentlest heart is fain To feed and banquet on another's woe.

How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance.

You keep to your own ways and leave mine to me.

For style beyond the genius never dares.

Alack our life, so beautiful to see, With how much ease life losest, in a day, What many years with pain and toil amassed!

It is better to will the good than to know the truth.

Often have I wondered with much curiosity as to our coming into this world and what will follow our departure.

Where you are is of no moment, but only what you are doing there. It is not the place that ennobles you, but you the place, and this only by doing that which is great and noble.

Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.

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.

Where are the numerous constructions erected by Agrippa, of which only the Pantheon remains? Where are the splendorous palaces of the emperors?

I would have preferred to have been born in any other time than our own.

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.

Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.

Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.

Continued work and application form my soul's nourishment. So soon as I commenced to rest and relax I should cease to live.

It may be only glory that we seek here, but I persuade myself that, as long as we remain here, that is right. Another glory awaits us in heaven and he who reaches there will not wish even to think of earthly fame.

Books never pall on me. They discourse with us, they take counsel with us, and are united to us by a certain living chatty familiarity. And not only does each book inspire the sense that it belongs to its readers, but it also suggests the name of others, and one begets the desire of the other.

He loves but lightly who his love can tell.

To be able to say how much love, is love but little.

Virtue is health, vice is sickness.

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?