Quotes from Giovanni Boccaccio

Heaven would indeed be heaven if lovers were there permitted as much enjoyment as they had experienced on earth.

In this world, you only get what you grab for.

People tend to believe the bad rather than the good.

Human it is to have compassion on the unhappy.

My mind is wholly possessed by Love, who rules every part there of, in virtue of his all-embracing deity.

His hair stood upright like porcupine quills.

Do as we say, and not as we do.

While farmers generally allow one rooster for ten hens, ten men are scarcely sufficient to service one woman.

since the beginning of the world men have been and will be, until the end thereof, bandied about by various shifts of fortune

richer, by far in coin than in wit

lo que Pietro se proponía para satisfacción de los tres se me ha olvidado; pero bien sé que a la mañana siguiente en la plaza se vio el joven no muy seguro de a quién había acompañado más por la noche, si a la mujer o al marido.

There shall we heare the pretty birds sweetly singing, see the hilles and plaines verdantly flouring; the Corne waving in the field like the billowes of the Sea, infinite store of goodly trees

of the celestial bodies, or sent upon us mortals by God

Tedaldo adunque, tornato ricchissimo, perseverò nel suo amare, e, senza piú turbarsi la donna, discretamente operando, lungamente goderon del loro amore. Dio faccia noigoder del nostro.

un monaco, il quale in ogni cosa era santissimo fuor che nell'opera delle femine; e questo sapeva sí cautamente fare che quasi niuno, non che il sapesse, ma né suspicava, per che santissimo e giusto era tenuto in ogni cosa.

He was a terrible blasphemer of God and the saints, and that for every trifle, being the most choleric man alive.

En una bandada de blancas palomas, un cuervo negro añade más belleza incluso que el candor de un cisne

it was one which the Old Man of the Mountain* was in the habit of using when he wished to send people to his paradise in their sleep, or when he wished to bring them back. This prince said also that, by varying the amount administered, it would work, without causing any harm, to send a man to sleep for a longer or shorter period and, while its effect lasted, no one would think him to be alive. The

He thought that Abraham would never become a Christian once he had seen the Papal Court; but, since it was useless, he gave up trying to dissuade him.

No one will ever know it and a sin that's hidden is half forgiven.

let grease his palm with a good dose of St. John Goldenmouth's ointment[56

Y si tú no te has dado cuenta de otra cosa, sí debes darte de ésta: que nosotras siempre estamos dispuestas, lo que no sucede con los hombres; y además de esto, una mujer cansaría a muchos hombres, mientras muchos hombres no pueden cansar a una mujer:

I purpose to relate to you of a marquess, not an act of magnificence, but a monstrous folly, which, albeit good ensued to him thereof in the end, I counsel not any to imitate, for it was a thousand pities that weal betided him thereof.

My friends, you constrain me unto that which I was altogether resolved never to do, considering how hard a thing it is to find a wife whose fashions sort well within one's own humour and how great an abundance there is of the contrary sort and how dour a life is his who happeneth upon a woman not well suited unto him.