Letter to Giovanni Boccaccio (28 April 1373) as quoted in Petrarch : The First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters (1898) edited by James Harvey Robinson and Henry Winchester Rolfe, p. 418
Context: You, my friend, by a strange confusion of arguments, try to dissuade me from continuing my chosen work by urging, on the one hand, the hopelessness of bringing my task to completion, and by dwelling, on the other, upon the glory which I have already acquired. Then, after asserting that I have filled the world with my writings, you ask me if I expect to equal the number of volumes written by Origen or Augustine. No one, it seems to me, can hope to equal Augustine. Who, nowadays, could hope to equal one who, in my judgment, was the greatest in an age fertile in great minds? As for Origen, you know that I am wont to value quality rather than quantity, and I should prefer to have produced a very few irreproachable works rather than numberless volumes such as those of Origen, which are filled with grave and intolerable errors.
Francesco Petrarca: Greatness
Francesco Petrarca was Italian scholar and poet. Explore interesting quotes on greatness.“Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.”
De remediis utriusque fortunae (1354), Book II
Letter to Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro (26 April 1336), "The Ascent of Mount Ventoux" in Familiar Letters http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/read_letters.html?s=pet17.html as translated by James Harvey Robinson (1898); the name Mount Ventosum relates to it being a windy mountain.
Context: To-day I made the ascent of the highest mountain in this region, which is not improperly called Ventosum. My only motive was the wish to see what so great an elevation had to offer. I have had the expedition in mind for many years; for, as you know, I have lived in this region from infancy, having been cast here by that fate which determines the affairs of men. Consequently the mountain, which is visible from a great distance, was ever before my eyes, and I conceived the plan of some time doing what I have at last accomplished to-day.
Letter to Giovanni Boccaccio (28 April 1373) as quoted in Petrarch : The First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters (1898) edited by James Harvey Robinson and Henry Winchester Rolfe, p. 417
Context: I certainly will not reject the praise you bestow upon me for having stimulated in many instances, not only in Italy but perhaps beyond its confines also, the pursuit of studies such as ours, which have suffered neglect for so many centuries; I am, indeed, almost the oldest of those among us who are engaged in the cultivation of these subjects. But I cannot accept the conclusion you draw from this, namely, that I should give place to younger minds, and, interrupting the plan of work on which I am engaged, give others an opportunity to write something, if they will, and not seem longer to desire to reserve everything for my own pen. How radically do our opinions differ, although, at bottom, our object is the same! I seem to you to have written everything, or at least a great deal, while to myself I appear to have produced almost nothing.
“Ah new people, haughty beyond measure, irreverent to so great a mother!”
Canzone 53, st. 6
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life
“A thing seems a great marvel but then is despised.”
Tal par gran meraviglia, et poi si sprezza.
Canzone 105, st. 4
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life