Dante Alighieri Quotes

Do not be afraid; our fate Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.

My course is set for an uncharted sea.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

There is no greater sorrow Than to recall a happy time When miserable.

The path to paradise begins in hell.

In that book which is my memory, On the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you, Appear the words, ‘Here begins a new life’.

All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.

The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain.

Remember tonight...for it's the beginning of forever. - Dante Alighieri

L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.

The devil is not as black as he is painted.

The wisest are the most annoyed at the loss of time.

There is no greater sorrow then to recall our times of joy in wretchedness.

He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it.

Consider your origin. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.

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

Beauty awakens the soul to act.

Love insists the loved loves back

They yearn for what they fear for.

Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice.

There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery the time when we were happy.

Love, that moves the sun and the other stars

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

The man who lies asleep will never waken fame, and his desire and all his life drift past him like a dream, and the traces of his memory fade from time like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.

Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people

Nature is the art of God.

Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Through me you pass into the city of woe: Through me you pass into eternal pain: Through me among the people lost for aye. Justice the founder of my fabric moved: To rear me was the task of power divine, Supremest wisdom, and primeval love. Before me things create were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I shall endure. All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

From there we came outside and saw the stars

The day that man allows true love to appear, those things which are well made will fall into cofusion and will overturn everything we believe to be right and true.

Because your question searches for deep meaning, I shall explain in simple words

I did not die, and yet I lost life’s breath

Lost are we, and are only so far punished, That without hope we live on in desire.

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

Amor, ch'al cor gentile ratto s'apprende prese costui de la bella persona che mi fu tolta; e 'l modo ancor m'offende. Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona, Mi prese del costui piacer sì forte, Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona..." "Love, which quickly arrests the gentle heart, Seized him with my beautiful form That was taken from me, in a manner which still grieves me. Love, which pardons no beloved from loving, took me so strongly with delight in him That, as you see, it still abandons me not...

Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground

Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to the other shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice.

No sadness is greater than in misery to rehearse memories of joy.

For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.

I felt for the tormented whirlwinds Damned for their carnal sins Committed when they let their passions rule their reason.

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.

At grief so deep the tongue must wag in vain; the language of our sense and memory lacks the vocabulary of such pain.

In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn wood this was, which in my thought renews the fear!

أحلك الأماكن في الجحيم هي لأولئك الذين يحافظون على حيادهم في الأزمات الأخلاقية.

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.

The Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria...

Apparuit iam beatitudo vestra,

The poets leave hell and again behold the stars.

Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.

He woke her then, and trembling and obedient, she ate that burning heart out of his hand. Weeping, I saw him then depart from me. Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for her? Find nourishment in the very sight of her? I think so. But would she see through the bars of his plight, and ache for him?

He is, most of all, l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.

Segui il tuo corso et lascia dir les genti (Follow your road and let the people say)

In His will, our peace.

Now you know how much my love for you burns deep in me when I forget about our emptiness, and deal with shadows as with solid things.

There is a gentle thought that often springs to life in me, because it speaks of you.

I am the way into the city of woe, I am the way into eternal pain, I am the way to go among the lost. Justice caused my high architect to move, Divine omnipotence created me, The highest wisdom, and the primal love. Before me there were no created things But those that last forever—as do I. Abandon all hope you who enter here.

It was the hour of morning, when the sun mounts with those stars that shone with it when God's own love first set in motion those fair things

One ought to be afraid of nothing other then things possessed of power to do us harm, but things innoucuous need not be feared.

And I — my head oppressed by horror — said: "Master, what is it that I hear? Who are those people so defeated by their pain?"       And he to me: "This miserable way is taken by the sorry souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise.       They now commingle with the coward angels, the company of those who were not rebels nor faithful to their God, but stood apart.       The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened, have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them — even the wicked cannot glory in them.

Love, which absolves no one beloved from loving, seized me so strongly with his charm that, as you see, it has not left me yet. Love brought us to one death.

Not like Homer would I write, Not like Dante if I might, Not like Shakespeare at his best, Not like Goethe or the rest, Like myself, however small, Like myself, or not at all.

If the present world go astray, the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought.

Fate's arrow, when expected, travels slow.

Reading list (1972 edition)[edit] 1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey 2. The Old Testament 3. Aeschylus – Tragedies 4. Sophocles – Tragedies 5. Herodotus – Histories 6. Euripides – Tragedies 7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War 8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings 9. Aristophanes – Comedies 10. Plato – Dialogues 11. Aristotle – Works 12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus 13. Euclid – Elements 14. Archimedes – Works 15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections 16. Cicero – Works 17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things 18. Virgil – Works 19. Horace – Works 20. Livy – History of Rome 21. Ovid – Works 22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia 23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania 24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic 25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion 26. Ptolemy – Almagest 27. Lucian – Works 28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations 29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties 30. The New Testament 31. Plotinus – The Enneads 32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine 33. The Song of Roland 34. The Nibelungenlied 35. The Saga of Burnt Njál 36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica 37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy 38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales 39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks 40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy 41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly 42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres 43. Thomas More – Utopia 44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises 45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel 46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion 47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays 48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies 49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote 50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene 51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis 52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays 53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences 54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World 55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals 56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan 57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy 58. John Milton – Works 59. Molière – Comedies 60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises 61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light 62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics 63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education 64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies 65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics 66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology 67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe 68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal 69. William Congreve – The Way of the World 70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge 71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man 72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws 73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary 74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones 75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets

We were men once, though we've become trees

As phantoms frighten beasts when shadows fall.

As one who sees in dreams and wakes to find the emotional impression of his vision still powerful while its parts fade from his mind - Just such am I, having lost nearly all the vision itself, while in my heart I feel the sweetness of it yet distill and fall.

I found myself within a forest dark,

So that the Universe felt love, by which, as somebelieve, the world has many times been turned to chaos. And at that moment this ancient rock, here and elsewhere, fell broken into pieces.

Here pity only lives when it is dead - Virgil

Open your mind to what I shall disclose, and hold it fast within you; he who hears, but does not hold what he has heard, learns nothing.

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.

all things created have an order in themselves, and this begets the form that lets the universe resemble God.

My thoughts were full of other things When I wandered off the path.

Soon you will be where your own eyes will see the source and cause and give you their own answer to the mystery.

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

I, answering in the end, began: 'Alas, how many yearning thoughts, what great desire, have lead them through such sorrow to their fate?

Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path.

Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path. How hard it is to tell what it was like, this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn (the thought of it brings back all my old fears), a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer. But if I would show the good that came of it I must talk about things other than the good.

Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving, Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly, That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me.

There is no greater sorrow than thinking back upon a happy time in misery--

For pride and avarice and envy are the three fierce sparks that set all hearts ablaze.

To get back up to the shining world from there My guide and I went into that hidden tunnel, And Following its path, we took no care To rest, but climbed: he first, then I-so far, through a round aperture I saw appear Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears, Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars.

It is necessity and not pleasure that compels us. [Italian: Necessita c'induce, e non diletto.]

You did thirst for blood, and with blood I fill you

The mind which is created quick to love, is responsive to everything that is pleasing, soon as by pleasure it is awakened into activity. Your apprehensive faculty draws an impression from a real object, and unfolds it within you, so that it makes the mind turn thereto. And if, being turned, it inclines towards it, that inclination is love; that is nature, which through pleasure is bound anew within you.

The experience of this sweet life.

In each fire there is a spirit; Each one is wrapped in what is burning him.

Those ancients who in poetry presented the golden age, who sang its happy state, perhaps, in their Parnassus, dreamt this place. Here, mankind's root was innocent; and here were every fruit and never-ending spring; these streams--the nectar of which poets sing.

Justice does not descend from its own pinnacle.

This mountain is so formed that it is always wearisome when one begins the ascent, but becomes easier the higher one climbs.

Through me the way into the suffering city, Through me the way into eternal pain, Through me the way that runs among the lost.

I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightfoward pathway had been lost. Ah me! How hard a thing is to say, what was this forest savage, rough, and stern, which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is little more...

Perceive ye not that we are worms, designed To form the angelic butterfly, that goes To judgment, leaving all defence behind? Why doth your mind take such exalted pose, Since ye, disabled, are as insects, mean As worm which never transformation knows?

Through me is the way to the city of woe. Through me is the way to sorrow eternal. Through me is the way to the lost below. Justice moved my architect supernal. I was constructed by divine power, supreme wisdom, and love primordial. Before me no created things were. Save those eternal, and eternal I abide. Abandon all hope, you who enter.

O grace abounding and allowing me to dare to fix my gaze on the Eternal Light, so deep my vision was consumed in it! I saw how it contains within its depths all things bound in a single book by love of which creation is the scattered leaves: how substance, accident, and their relation were fused in such a way that what I now describe is but a glimmer of that Light.

Noi leggeveamo un giorno per diletto Di Lancialotto, come amor lo strinse; Soli eravamo e senza alcun sospetto Per più fiate gli occhi ci sospinse Quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso; Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse. Quando leggemmo il disiato riso Esser baciato da cotanto amante, Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso, La bocca mi baciò tutto tremante. Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse: Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante." ""We were reading one day, to pass the time, of Lancelot, how love had seized him. We were alone, and without any suspicion And time and time again our eyes would meet over that literature, and our faces paled, and yet one point alone won us. When we had read how the desired smile was kissed by so true a lover, This one, who never shall be parted from me, kissed my mouth, all a-tremble. Gallehault was the book and he who wrote it That day we read no further.

Here sighs and cries and shrieks of lamentation echoed throughout the starless air of Hell; at first these sounds resounding made me weep: tongues confused, a language strained in anguish with cadences of anger, shrill outcries and raucous groans that joined with sounds of hands, raising a whirling storm that turns itself forever through that air of endless black, like grains of sand swirling when a whirlwind blows. And I, in the midst of all this circling horror, began, "Teacher, what are these sounds I hear? What souls are these so overwhelmed by grief?" And he to me: "This wretched state of being is the fate of those sad souls who lived a life but lived it with no blame and with no praise. They are mixed with that repulsive choir of angels neither faithful nor unfaithful to their God, who undecided stood but for themselves. Heaven, to keep its beauty, cast them out, but even Hell itself would not receive them, for fear the damned might glory over them." And I. "Master, what torments do they suffer that force them to lament so bitterly?" He answered: "I will tell you in few words: these wretches have no hope of truly dying, and this blind life they lead is so abject it makes them envy every other fate. The world will not record their having been there; Heaven's mercy and its justice turn from them. Let's not discuss them; look and pass them by...