Love doesn't hide. It stays and fights. It goes the distance, that's why love is so strong. So it can carry you all the way home.

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.

With a goose-quill and a few sheets of paper, I mock myself of the universe. They say I am the son of a courtesan; it may be so, but I have the heart of a King. I live free, I enjoy myself, I can call myself happy.

Flattery and deceit are the darlings of great men, and so with these men spread the butter on thick, if you want to get something out of them, otherwise you'll come home to me with a full belly and an empty purse.

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

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.

A man who permits his honor to be taken, permits his life to be taken.