Quotes from Petrarch

Shame is the fruit of my vanities, and remorse, and the clearest knowledge of how the world's delight is a brief dream.

He who can describe how his heart is ablaze is burning on a small pyre] ~ Petrarch, Sonnet 137 (from Montaigne, On sadness)

I ate in the morning what I would digest in the evening; I swallowed as a boy what I would ruminate upon as an older man. I have thoroughly absorbed these writings, implanting them not only in my memory but in my marrow. (Quoted by Josh Foer in Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything)

Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.

I desire that death find me ready and writing, or if it please Christ, praying and intears.

Suspicion is the cancer of friendship.

For though I am a body of this earth, my firm desire is born from the stars.