Dante Alighieri: Trending quotes

“Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries
were echoing across the starless air,
so that, as soon as I set out, I wept.
Strange utterances, horrible pronouncements,
accents of anger, words of suffering,
and voices shrill and faint, and beating hands—
all went to make a tumult that will whirl
forever through that turbid, timeless air,
like sand that eddies when a whirlwind swirls.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto III, lines 22–30 (tr. Mandelbaum).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Suffering , Anger

“La moralitade è bellezza de la filosofia.”

Dante Alighieri

Morality is the beauty of Philosophy.
Trattato Terzo, Ch. 15.
Il Convivio (1304–1307)

“Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto XXXIV, line 139 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Star

“A thing done has an end!”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto XXVIII, line 107 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

“Necessity brings him here, not pleasure.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto XII, line 87 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Pleasure

“For to lose time irks him most who most knows.”

Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio

Canto III, line 78 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

Time

“O Sun, that healest all distempered vision,
Thou dost content me so, when thou resolvest,
That doubting pleases me no less than knowing!”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto XI, lines 91–93 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Sun

“For all the gold that is beneath the moon,
Or ever has been, of these weary souls
Could never make a single one repose.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto VII, lines 64–66 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Soul

“To be rude to him was courtesy.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto XXXIII, line 150 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

“Time moves and yet we do not notice it.”

Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio

Canto IV, line 9 (tr. Mandelbaum).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

Time

“And his will is our peace; this is the sea
To which is moving onward whatsoever
It doth create, and all that nature makes.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto III, lines 85–87 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

Peace , Nature , Sea

“And one his limb transpierced, and one lopped off, should show, it would be nothing to compare with the disgusting mode of the ninth Bolgia. A cask by losing centre-piece or cant was never shattered so, as I saw one rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind. Between his legs were hanging down his entrails; his heart was visible, and the dismal sack that maketh excrement of what is eaten. While I was all absorbed in seeing him, he looked at me, and opened with his hands his bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me; How mutilated, see, is Mahomet; in front of me doth Ali weeping go, cleft in the face from forelock unto chin; and all the others whom thou here beholdest, disseminators of scandal and of schism while living were, and therefore are cleft thus.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto XXVIII
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Heart

“How long in woman lasts the fire of love,
If eye or touch do not relight it often.”

Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio

Canto VIII, lines 77–78 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

Love

“When I had journeyed half of our life's way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto I, lines 1–3 (tr. Mandelbaum).
Longfellow's translation:
: Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straight-forward pathway had been lost.
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Life , Way

“This miserable state
is borne by the wretched souls of those
who lived without disgrace and without praise.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto III, lines 34–36 (tr. John D. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Soul

“I am he who held both the keys of the heart of Frederick, and who turned them, locking and unlocking so softly.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto XIII, lines 58–60 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Heart

“Virtue with poverty didst thou prefer
To the possession of great wealth with vice.”

Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio

Canto XX, lines 26–27 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

Wealth

“I saw within Its depth how It conceives
all things in a single volume bound by Love,
of which the universe is the scattered leaves.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XXXIII, lines 85–87 (tr. Ciardi).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

Love , Universe

“Love hath so long possessed me for his own
And made his lordship so familiar.”

Dante Alighieri book Vita Nuova

Sì lungiamente m'ha tenuto Amore
e costumato a la sua segnoria
Source: La Vita Nuova (1293), Chapter XXIV

Love

“O conscience, upright and stainless, how bitter a sting to thee is little fault!”

Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio

Canto III, lines 8–9 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio