Dante Paradiso Quotes

All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

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

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

The devil is not as black as he is painted.

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?

Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice.

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.

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.

And then there was you. You changed everything I believed in. You know that line from Dante that I quoted to you in the park? 'L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle'?" Her lips curled a little at the sides as she looked up at him. "I still don't speak Italian." "It's a bit of the very last verse from Paradiso - Dante's Paradise. 'My will and my desire were turned by love, the love that moves the sun and the other stars.' Dante was trying to explain faith, I think, as an overpowering love, and maybe it's blasphemous, but that's how I think of the way I love you. You came into my life and suddenly I had one truth to hold on to - that I loved you, and you loved me.

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

For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.

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!

The Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

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

ma gia volgena il mio disio e'l velle si come rota ch'igualmente e mossa, l'amor che move: i sole e l'altre stelle ...as a wheel turns smoothtly, free from jars, my will and my desire were turned by love, The love that moves the sun and the other stars.

Fate's arrow, when expected, travels slow.

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.

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.

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

Oh blind, oh ignorant, self-seeking cupidity which spurs as so in the short mortal life and steeps as through all eternity.

As the geometer intently seeks to square the circle, but he cannot reach, through thought on thought, the principle he needs, so I searched that strange sight.

From a little spark may burst a flame.

And I was told about this torture, that it was the Hell of carnal sins when reasons give way to desire.

And as he, who with laboring breath has escaped from the deep to the shore, turns to the perilous waters and gazes.

Faith is the substance of the things we hope for, And evidence of those that are not seen...

If you, free as you are of every weight had stayed below, then that would be as strange as living flame on earth remaining still." And then she turned her gaze up toward the heavens.

That with him were, what time the Love Divine

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.

Lady, you who are so great, so powerful, that who seeks grace without recourse to you would have his wish fly upward without wings.

There is no greater sorrow than to recall our time of joy in wretchedness.

God's greatest gift to man In all the bounty He was moved to make Throughout creation-the one gift the most Close to his goodness and the one He calls Most precious-is free will.

When any of our faculties retains a strong impression of delight or pain, the soul will wholly concentrate on that, neglecting any other power it has; and thus, when something seen or heard secures the soul in stringent grip, time moves and yet we do not notice it.

All Being within this order, by the laws of its own nature is impelled to find its proper station round its Primal Cause. Thus every nature moves across the tide of the great sea of being to its own port, each with its given instinct as its guide.

We climbed, he first and I behind, until though a small round opening ahead of us, I saw the lovely things the heavens hold, and we came out to see once more the stars.

It's a bit of the very last verse from Paradiso- Dante's Paradise. 'My will and my desire were turned by love, the love that moves the sun and the other stars.' Dante was trying to explain faith, I thnk, as an overpowering love, and maybe it's blasphemous, but that's how I think of the way that I love you. You came into my life and suddenly I had one truth to hold on to- that I loved you, and you loved me.

God is the love that moves the sun and stars.

That precious fruit which all men eagerly go searching for on many different boughs will give,today, peace to your hungry soul.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say

Great fire can follow a small spark: there may be better voices after me to pray to Cyrrha's god for aid - that he may answer.

Here powers failed my high imagination: But by now my desire and will were turned, Like a balanced wheel rotated evenly, By the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

But in the divine nature Persons three, And in one person the divine and human.

And what will bow your shoulders down will be the vicious and worthless company with whom you will fall into this abyss.

A l'alta fantasia qui mancò possa; ma già volgeva il mio disio e'l velle sì come rota ch'igualmente è mossa, l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.

O you, who in some pretty boat, Eager to listen, have been following Behind my ship, that singing sails along Turn back to look again upon your own shores; Tempt not the deep, lest unawares, In losing me, you yourselves might be lost. The sea I sail has never yet been passed; Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo, And Muses nine point out to me the Bears. You other few who have neck uplifted Betimes to the bread of angels upon Which one lives and does not grow sated, Well may you launch your vessel Upon the deep sea.

Hell exists from within.

Whoso laments, that we must doff this garb Of frail mortality, thenceforth to live Immortally above, he hath not seen The sweet refreshing, of that heav’nly shower.

Behave like men, and not like witless sheep...

Open thy mind; take in what I explain and keep it there; because to understand is not to know, if thou dost not retain...

beheld a power whose head was crowned with signs of victory.

O virgin mother, daughter of thy Son, humble beyond all creatures and more exalted; predestined turning point of God's intention; Thy merit so ennobled human nature that its divine Creator did not scorn to make Himself the creature of His creature. The Love that was rekindled in Thy womb sends for the warmth of the eternal peace within whose ray this flower has come to bloom. Here to us, thou art the noon and scope of Love revealed; and among mortal men, the living fountain of eternal hope.

Fate's arrow, when expected, travels slow

So what brings you to this killing pickle?

the Love that moves the sun and all the other stars.

We all so willingly record our gains, until the hour that leads us into loss. Then every single thought is tears and sadness.

Thus it was up to God, to Him alone in His own ways - by one or both, I say - to give man back his whole life and perfection. But since a deed done is more prized the more it manifests within itself the mark of the loving heart and goodness of the doer, the Everlasting Love, whose seal is plain on all the wax of the world was pleased to move in all His ways to raise you up again. There was not, nor will be, from the first day to the last night, an act so glorious and so magnificent, on either way. For God, in giving Himself that man might be able to raise himself, gave even more than if he had forgiven him in mercy. All other means would have been short, I say, of perfect justice, but that God's own Son humbled Himself to take on mortal clay. -Paradiso, Canto VII

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.

They lived before the Christian age began. They paid no reverence, as was due to God. And in this number I myself am one.  40         For such deficiencies, no other crime, we all are lost yet only suffer harm through living in desire, but hopelessly.

Well do I see how the Eternal Ray, which, once seen, kindles love forevermore, already shines on you. If on your way some other thing seduce your love, my brother, it can only be a trace, misunderstood, of this, which you see shining through the other.

Christians, be steadier in what you do, not blown like feathers at the wind's discretion, nor think that every water cleanses you...

These are the radiancies of the perfected vision that sees the good and step by step moves nearer what it sees.

My sins and crimes were horrible to hear. God, though, unendingly is good. His arms enfold and grasp all those who turn to Him.

All mankind’s institutions, of every sort, have their own death, though in what long endures it is hidden from you, your own lives being short. [XVI:79-81]

Your life is breathed forth immediately/ by the Chief Good, who so enamors it/ of His own self that it desires Him always.

Open your mind to what I shall explain, then close around it, for it is no learning to understand what one does not retain.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Se tu segui tua stella, non puoi fallire a glorioso porto

    I saw there, on that threshold – framed – more than a thousand who had rained from Heaven. Spitting in wrath. ‘Who’s that,’ they hissed, ‘who, yet undead,  85         travels the kingdom of the truly dead?

The hope is that here, as in other respects, the reader is invited into a critical and collaborative venture, seeing what Dante sees and constructing along with him (as he himself asks his reader to do, for instance, in Paradiso 13: 1–18) the relationships that define us humans in our own participation in existence.

Poeta fui, e cantai di quel giusto figliuol d'Anchise che venne di Troia, poi che 'l superbo Ilión fu combusto.

Usury is an act of Violence against Art, which is the child of Nature and hence the Grandchild of God. (By

Dante’s Cantos average about 140 lines. As a general thing he requires no more than twenty or thirty lines to identify the sinner and to describe the punishment.

Form, in its interrelations, is the most speaking element.

English “broadcast” once meant specifically “a way of sowing” and was borrowed by radio as an analogy.

a sense of the right-choice-alwaysbeing-made”; and this applies to everything from the smallest word to the harmonious interrelation of the principal divisions.

The resulting effect to the ear, which must be the supreme judge in these matters,

works themselves, except as he could beg or borrow the manuscripts.

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate'.

ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.

le mani alzò con amendue le fiche,

gridando: «Togli, Dio, ch'a te le squadro!».

150 sì ch'ogne Bianco ne sarà feruto.

Allor li fu l'orgoglio sì caduto,

E 'l duca mio a me: «O tu che siedi tra li scheggion del ponte quatto quatto, sicuramente omai a me ti riedi».

Love, which in gentlest hearts will soonest bloom seized my lover with passion for that sweet body from which I was torn unshriven to my doom

 Se mala cupidigia altro vi grida, uomini siate, e non pecore matte,

Through the waters spilled by the spring, I was remade. Forth I fared, a new plant with new leaves in a new time. The stars were there, and I was set to climb.

through furiousness Of ne’er abated pruriency.

Temer si dee di sole quelle cose c'hanno potenza di fare altrui male; de l'altre no, ché non son paurose.

For when the powers of working intellect are wed to strength and absolute illwill, then humans cannot find a place to hide.

The young explorer from medieval Christendom went doggedly on from one work to another which he had seen mentioned, without adequate teachers, courses, reference works, or indeed, the

Take, for example, Paradiso by Dante, which manages an artistically interpreted—but not inaccurate—understanding of the Earth and its atmosphere. The mystique of Dante’s heaven may be attributed to both scientific and magical forces.

¿Por qué te enamora mi faz de tal suerte que no te vuelves hacia el hermoso jardín que florece bajo los rayos de Cristo? Allí están la rosa en que el Verbo divino encarnó; y allí están los lirios por cuyo aroma se descubre el buen camino.

Not like Dante discovering a commedia upon the slopes of heaven I would paint a different kind of Paradiso in which the people would be naked as they always are in scenes like that because it is supposed to be a painting of their souls but there would be no anxious angels telling them how heaven is the perfect picture of a monarchy and there would be no fires burning in the hellish holes below in which I might have stepped nor any altars in the sky except fountains of imagination

He has time for gossip, for prophecies, for marvelous dramatic interplays, for treatises on history, for analyzing the French monarchy, the corruption of the Church, the decay of Italian politics. He has time for all sorts of metaphysical treatises on such matters as the nature of the generative principle, literary criticism, meteorology—in short, for his whole unfinished encyclopedia. And he still has time to invent a death for Ulysses, to engage in a metamorphic contest with Ovid, to make side remarks to his friends.

...Because the sacred fire that lights all nature liveliest of all in its own image glows. All these prerogatives the human creature possesses, and if one of them should fail, he must diminish from his noble stature. Sin only can disenfranchise him, and veil his likeness to the Highest Good; whereby the light in him is lessened and grows pale. Ne'er can he win back dignities so high till the void made by guilt be all filled in with just amends paid for by illicit joy. Now, when your nature as a whole did sin in its first root, it lost these great awards, and lost the Eden of its origin; nor might they be recovered afterwards by any means, as if thou search thou'lt see, except by crossing one of these two fords; either must God, of his sole courtesy, remit, or man must pay with all that's his, the debt of sin in its entirety. Within the Eternal Counsel's deep abyss rivet thine eye, and with a heed as good as thou canst give me, do thou follow this. Man from his finite assets never could make satisfaction; ne'er could he abase him so low, obey thereafter all he would, as he'd by disobedience sought to raise him; and for this cause man might not pay his due himself, nor from the debtor's roll erase him. Needs then must God, by his own ways, renew man's proper life, and reinstate him so; his ways I say - by one, or both of two. And since the doer's actions ever show more gracious as the style of them makes plain the goodness of the heart from which they flow, that most high Goodness which is God was fain - even God, whose impress Heaven and earth display - by all His ways to lift you up again; nor, between final night and primal day, was e'er proceeding so majestical and high, nor shall not be, by either way; for God's self-giving, which made possible that man should raise himself, showed more largesse than if by naked power He'd cancelled all; and every other means would have been less than justice, if it had not pleased God's Son to be humiliate in fleshliness.

Here we should notice a peculiar fact: that there are movements which are both essentially involuntary and yet confined to persons - to creatures with a self-conscious perspective. Smiles and blushes are the two most prominent examples. Milton puts the point finely in Paradise Lost: for smiles from Reason flow, To brute denied, and are of love the food. These physiognomic movements owe their rich intentionality to this involuntary character, for it is this which suggests that they show the other 'as he really is'. Hence they become the pivot and focus of our interpersonal responses, and of no response more than sexual desire. The voluntary smile is not a smile at all, but a kind of grimace which, while it may have its own species of sincerity—as in the smile of Royalty, which as it were pays lip-service to good nature — is not esteemed as an expression of the soul. On the contrary, it is perceived as a mask, which conceals the 'real being' of the person who wears it. Smiling must be understood as a response to another person, to a thought or perception of his presence, and it has its own intentionality. To smile is to smile at something or someone, and hence when we see someone smiling in the street we think of him as 'smiling to himself, meaning that there is some hidden object of his present thought and feeling. The smile of love is a kind of intimate recognition and acceptance of the other's presence - an involuntary acknowledgement that his existence gives you pleasure. The smile of the beloved is not flesh, but a kind of stasis in the movement of the flesh. It is a paradigm of 'incarnation': of the other made flesh, and so transforming the flesh in which he is made. Thus the smile of Beatrice conveys her spiritual reality; Dante must be fortified in order to bear it, for to look at it is to look at the sun (Paradiso, XXIII, 47—8): tu hai vedute cose, che possente set fatto a sostener lo riso mio.