Quotes from Dante Alighieri

For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?

O human race born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou fall.

The experience of this sweet life. L'esperienza de questa dolce vita.

There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, and sand eddies in a whirlwind.

There's not the least thing can be said or done, but people will talk and find fault.

These have not the hope to die.

Through me you pass into the city of woeThrough me you pass into eternal painThrough me among the people lost for aye.Justice the founder of my fabric movedTo rear me was the task of power divine,Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.Before me things create were none, save thingsEternal, and eternal I shall endure.All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving, seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly, that, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me.

In judgement be ye not too confident, Even as a man who will appraise his corn When standing in a field, ere it is ripe.

No man may be so cursed by priest or pope but what the Eternal Love may still return while any thread of green lives on in hope.

A man's renown is like the hue of grass, Which comes and goes.

But if, as morning rises, dreams are true.

Art, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God's grandchild.

All of nature is God's art.

In His will, our peace.

Here let dead poetry rise once more to life.

There is no greater sorrowThan to recall a happy timeWhen miserable.

I felt for the tormented whirlwindsDamned for their carnal sinsCommitted when they let their passions rule their reason.

It may be that a more subtle person would find for this thing a reason of greater subtlety: but such is the reason that I find, and that liketh me best.

For where the instrument of intelligence is added to brute power and evil will, mankind is powerless in its own defense.

Nature is the art of God.

I am made of God, through his Grace. Such that your misery touches me not, Nor does flame of that burning assail me.

…all things created have an order in themselves, and this begets the form that lets the universe resemble God.

Behold a God more powerful than I who comes to rule over me.