Quotes from book
Paradiso

Paradiso

Dante AlighieriOriginal title Paradiso (Italian, 1321)

Paradiso is the third and final part of Dante's Divine Comedy, following the Inferno and the Purgatorio. It is an allegory telling of Dante's journey through Heaven, guided by Beatrice, who symbolises theology. In the poem, Paradise is depicted as a series of concentric spheres surrounding the Earth, consisting of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, the Primum Mobile and finally, the Empyrean. It was written in the early 14th century. Allegorically, the poem represents the soul's ascent to God.

“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

“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

“The sword above here smiteth not in haste
Nor tardily, howe'er it seem to him
Who fearing or desiring waits for it.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XXII, lines 16–18 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“A great flame follows a little spark.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto I, line 34 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“With the colour that paints the morning and evening clouds that face the sun I saw then the whole heaven suffused.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XXVII, lines 28–30 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“The experience of this sweet life.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

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

“The night that hides things from us.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

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

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

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

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

“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.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

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

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

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XXVI, lines 137–138 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“And sweet to us is such a deprivation,
Because our good in this good is made perfect,
That whatsoe'er God wills, we also will.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XX, lines 136–138 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“Now who art thou, that on the bench wouldst sit
In judgment at a thousand miles away,
With the short vision of a single span?”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XIX, lines 79–81 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“Like the lark that soars in the air, first singing, then silent, content with the last sweetness that satiates it, such seemed to me that image, the imprint of the Eternal Pleasure.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XX, lines 73–77 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“Thou shalt prove how salt is the taste of another man's bread and how hard is the way up and down another man's stairs.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XVII, lines 58–60 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“You dull your own perceptions
with false imaginings and do not grasp
what would be clear but for your preconceptions.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto I, lines 88–90 (tr. Ciardi).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“Not only thy benignity gives succour
To him who asketh it, but oftentimes
Forerunneth of its own accord the asking.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XXXIII, lines 16–18 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“But now was turning my desire and will,
Even as a wheel that equally is moved,
The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XXXIII, closing lines, as translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso
Context: As the geometrician, who endeavours
To square the circle, and discovers not,
By taking thought, the principle he wants,Even such was I at that new apparition;
I wished to see how the image to the circle
Conformed itself, and how it there finds place;But my own wings were not enough for this,
Had it not been that then my mind there smote
A flash of lightning, wherein came its wish. Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy:
But now was turning my desire and will,
Even as a wheel that equally is moved, The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.

“The glory of Him who moves everything penetrates through the universe, and is resplendent in one part more and in another less.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto I, lines 1–3 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“Therefore the sight that is granted to your world penetrates within the Eternal Justice as the eye into the sea; for though from the shore it sees the bottom, in the open sea it does not, and yet the bottom is there but the depth conceals it.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XIX, lines 58–63 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

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