I am a free man. I do not need to copy Petrarca or Boccaccio. My own genius is enough. Let others worry themselves about style, and so cease to be themselves. Without a master, without a model, without a guide, I go to work and earn my living, my well-being and my fame.

Desire is poison at lunch and wormwood at dinner; your bed is a stone, friendship is hateful and your fancy is always fixed on one thing.

Even when I'm railed at, I get my quota of renown.

Why should I be ashamed to describe what nature was not ashamed to create?

Anger represents a certain power, when a great mind, prevented from executing its own generous desires, is moved by it.

The art of war is like the art of the courtesan; indeed they might be called sisters, since both are slaves of desperation.

Poetry is a whim of Nature in her lighter moods; it requires nothing but its own madness and, lacking that, it becomes a soundless cymbal, a belfry without a bell.