Quotes from Durante degli Alighieri

There is no greater sorrowThan to be mindful of the happy timeIn misery.

Love, which is quickly kindled in the gentle heart,seized this man for the fair form that wastaken from me, and the manner still hurts me.

Between his legs were hanging down his entrails; His heart was visible, and the dismal sack that maketh excrement of what is eaten.

The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.

Necessity brings him here, not pleasure.

Love, which absolves no beloved one from loving, seized me so strongly with his charm that, as thou seest, it does not leave me yet.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The greatest gift that God in His bounty made in creation, and the most conformable to His goodness, and that which He prizes the most, was the freedom of will, with which the creatures with intelligence, they all and they alone, were and are endowed.

A great flame follows a little spark.

But so much the more malign and wild does the ground become with bad seed and untilled, as it has the more of good earthly vigor.

Less than a drop of blood remains in me that does not tremble; I recognize the signals of the ancient flame.

Love kindled by virtue always kindles another, provided that its flame appear outwardly.

Everyone confusedly conceives of a good in which the mind may be at rest, and desires it; wherefore everyone strives to attain it.

To a greater force, and to a better nature, you, free, are subject, and that creates the mind in you, which the heavens have not in their charge. Therefore if the present world go astray, the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought.

Give us this day the daily manna, without which, in this rough desert, he backward goes, who toils most to go on.

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

He goes seeking liberty, which is so dear, as he knows who for it renounces life.

To run over better waters the little vessel of my genius now hoists her sails, as she leaves behind her a sea so cruel.

Reader, if thou to credit what is here Art slow, 'tis no surprise, since I can scarce Believe, who saw it all as clear as clear.

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

Lying in a featherbed will bring you no 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.