Dante's Inferno Virgil Quotes

Here pity only lives when it is dead - Virgil

This is perhaps why Dante chooses the poet Virgil to be his guide in the Inferno; in visiting a strange location, it's always best to go with someone who's been there before, and – most important of all on a sightseeing tour of Hell – who might also know how to get you out again.

The writer, having lost his way in a gloomy forest, and being hindered by certain wild beasts from ascending a mountain, is met by Virgil, who promises to show him the punishments of Hell, and afterwards of Purgatory; and that he shall then be conducted by Beatrice into Paradise. He follows the Roman Poet.

Virgil, ești tu? Fântâna ești, al cării torent - îi zisei cu rușine-acum- bogat pornit-a fluviul cuvântării? tu marea faclă-n veci pe-al artei drum! deci fie-mi de-ajutor iubirea vie și studiul lung în dulcele-ți volum. Părinte-mi ești, maestru-mi ești tu mie, tu singur ești acel ce-a dat o viață frumosului meu stil ce-mi e mândrie.

I come across journalists in theatre lobbies; it makes me shudder to see them. Journalism is an inferno, a bottomless pit of iniquity and treachery and lies; no one can traverse it undefiled, unless, like Dante, he is protected by Virgil’s sacred laurel.

Now you must cast aside your laziness, for he who rests on down or under covers cannot come to fame - Virgil

Dante cuts short his excursion and returns to find Virgil mounted on the back of Geryon. Dante joins his Master and they fly down from the great cliff. Their flight carries them from the Hell of the VIOLENT AND THE BESTIAL (The Sins of the Lion) into the Hell of the FRAUDULENT AND MALICIOUS (The Sins of the Leopard).

...right," I say, clicking my pen. "I'd rather die than do a skit about Inferno, so there's that." "You know it?" he asks. "What?" "Like, have you read it?" Matt has a quiet, husky voice. He rushes through words as if he's not allowed to be talking. "Just excerpts, but I know the plot," I say. "Basically, Virgil gives Dante this guided tour of the nine circles of hell, and Dante wanders around judging people and fainting a ton. Which is kinda like, it seems sorta dangerous to drop unconscious in hell of all places, but I guess my experience there is limited, so.

If modern scholars overlook the entertainment motive, dominant in the Iliad, and treat Homer as a Virgil, Dante, or Milton, rather than as a Shakespeare or Cervantes, they are doing him a great disservice. The Iliad, Don Quixote and Shakespeare’s later plays are life—tragedy salted with humour; the Aeneid, the Inferno and Paradise Lost are literary works of almost superhuman eloquence, written for fame not profit, and seldom read except as a solemn intellectual task. The Iliad, and its later companion-piece, the Odyssey, deserve to be rescued from the classroom curse which has lain heavily on them throughout the past twenty-six centuries, and become entertainment once more; which is what I have attempted here. How this curse fell on them can be simply explained.

William Blake’s lustful sinners swirling through an eternal tempest … Bouguereau’s strangely erotic vision of Dante and Virgil watching two nude men locked in battle … Bayros’s tortured souls huddling beneath a hail-like torrent of scalding pellets and droplets of fire … Salvador Dalí’s eccentric series of watercolors and woodcuts … and Doré’s huge collection of black-and-white etchings depicting everything from the tunneled entrance to Hades … to winged Satan himself. Now it seemed that

The landscape of Hell is the largest shared construction project in imaginative history, and its chief architects have been creative giants- Homer, Virgil, Plato, Augustine, Dante, Bosch, Michelangelo, Milton, Goethe, Blake, and more.

That’s not Dante?’ Reuben grinned. ‘John F. Kennedy, actually. In the Inferno, Dante and Virgil pass by a group of dead souls outside the entrance to Hell. These individuals, when alive, remained neutral at a time of great moral decision. Virgil explains that these neutrals cannot enter either Heaven or Hell because they could not choose one side or another while on earth. They are therefore worse than the greatest sinners in Hell because they are abhorrent to both God and Satan alike, and have been left to mourn their fate as insignificant beings, neither hailed nor cursed in life or death, endlessly travailing below Heaven but outside of Hell.

The process that frees us from our inner hell is very simple, though not necessarily easy. Dante models it in The Divine Comedy. Horrified by the anguish of the tormented souls, the poet often wants to give up or turn back. But his soul teacher won’t let him. Throughout the inferno, Virgil keeps urging Dante to do three things: observe the demons, ask questions about them, and move on.

Natural love is "the desire each creature has for its own perfection," and it is by definition without error. Elective love involves free will; it can err by having a wrong object ("per malo obietto") or by being pursued with too much or too little vigor, but it avoids being the cause of sinful pleasure ("mal diletto") when it is directed to the Primal Good (God) or to secondary worldly goods in moderation ("ne' secondi sé stesso misura" [17.98]). Thus, Vergil concludes, love is the cause of every virtue or vice in man (17.103-5).

In Dante’s Inferno, Dante and his guide Virgil visited the Castle of Limbo, in the center of which was an idyllic green meadow. This was where the great pagan souls, the virtuous pagans, spent eternity. Limbo was a place of calm contemplation and tranquility. Its denizens were not tormented and tortured but left to their own devices. They could converse with one another among green fields and scenic towers. The most illustrious of them radiated an inner light, reflecting their genius. Even the Abrahamic God was dazzled by the enlightened pagans, the great heroes of philosophy, art, poetry, science and mathematics. No one can quench their light, and no one can remove their joy.