Dante Alighieri: Trending quotes

“The dames and cavaliers, the toils and ease
That filled our souls with love and courtesy,
There where the hearts have so malicious grown!”

Canto XXVIII, lines 25–27 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

“For always the man in whom thought springs up over thought sets his mark farther off, for the one thought saps the force of the other.”

Canto XIV, lines 109–111 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

“Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars.”

Canto V, lines 16–18 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

“The experience of this sweet life.”

Canto XXXIII, line 145 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

“To the right hand I turned, and fixed my mind
Upon the other pole, and saw four stars
Ne'er seen before save by the primal people.”

Canto XX, lines 47–48 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“Lying in a featherbed
will not bring you fame, nor staying beneath the quilt,
and he who uses up his life without achieving fame
leaves no more vestige of himself on Earth
than smoke in the air or foam upon the water.”

Canto I, lines 22–24 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

“Through me the way into the suffering city,
through me the way to eternal pain,
through me the way that runs among the lost.”

Canto XXIV, lines 47–51.
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

“The night that hides things from us.”

Canto III, lines 1–3 (tr. Mandelbaum).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

“And you, the living soul, you over there
get away from all these people who are dead.”

Canto XXIII, line 3 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“Behold the grass, the flowerets, and the shrubs
Which of itself alone this land produces.”

Canto III, lines 88–89 (tr. Mark Musa).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

“From that point
Dependent is the heaven and nature all.”

Canto XXVII, lines 134–135 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

“Against a better will the will fights ill,…”

Canto XXVIII, lines 41–42 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“A fair request should be followed by the deed in silence.”

Canto XX, line 1 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

“Morality is the beauty of Philosophy.”

Canto XXIV, lines 77–78 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Dante Alighieri

Trattato Terzo, Ch. 15.
Il Convivio (1304–1307)

“Here one must leave behind all hesitation;
here every cowardice must meet its death.”

“The greatest gift which God in His bounty bestowed in creating, and the most conformed to His own goodness and that which He most prizes, was the freedom of the will, with which the creatures that have intelligence, they all and they alone, were and are endowed.”

Canto III, lines 14–15 (tr. Mandelbaum).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

“The use of men is like a leaf
On bough, which goeth and another cometh.”

Canto V, lines 19–24 (tr. Singleton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso