Quotes About Dante

That with him were, what time the Love Divine

For whence did Dante get the material for his hell, if not from this actual world of ours? And indeed he made a downright hell of it.

For whence did Dante take the materials for his hell, but from this, our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell of it. And when, on the other hand, he came to the task of describing heaven and its delight, he had an insurmountable difficulty before him, for our world affords no materials at all for this.

Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage: "Ye who enter here leave all hope behind."

Dante dice que la alegría es luz intelectual llena de amor, amor de verdad lleno de júbilo, júbilo que trasciende toda dulzura. Descartes,

The ninth, the worst circle of the Inferno - Dante intended it for traitors.

The promise I had made to the dæmon weighed upon my mind, like Dante's iron cowl on the heads of the hellish hypocrites

The force of Dante's poetry resonated most in those who did not confess the Catholic faith, for believers would inevitably have quibbles with Dante's theology. But for those most distant theologically, Dante's faith was so perfect, so unyielding, that a reader found himself compelled by the poetry to take it all to heart.

It is the one time Dante calls such explicit attention to the idea of contrapasso-a word for which we have no exact translation, no precise definition in English, because the word in itself is its definition... Well, my dear Longfellow, I would say countersuffering ... the notion that each sinner must be punished by continuing the damage of his own sin against him... just as these Schismatics are cut apart...

No, never mind, I didn't think so. Mead, Dante's theme is man-not a man.' Lowell said finally with a mild patience that he reserved only for students. The Italians forever twitch at Dante's sleeves trying to make him say he is of their politics and their way of thinking. Their way indeed! To confine it to Florence or Italy is to banish it from the sympathies of mankind. We read Paradise Lost as a poem but Dante's Comedy as a chronicle of our inner lives. Do you boys know of Isaiah 38:10

Lo giorno se n'andava - Day was departing... Dante slows his deliberation as he prepares to enter the infernal realms for the first time: ... e io sol uno - and only I alone... -how lonely he felt! He has to say it three times! io, sol, uno... m'apparecchiava a sostener la guerra, sì del cammino e sì de la pietate.

The sin of ingratitude may not have made the Top Seven, but according to Dante it consigns the sinners to the ninth circle of Hell, and that's where post-1960s intellectual culture may find itself because of its amnesia for the conquerors of disease.

Rufio's a great iconic character for a certain generation and definitely something I'm always associated with, proud to be associated with which is cool.

The Bible, and virtually every major religion on earth, has a term for this practice. It's called "usury." In The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the seventh circle of hell for people who charged usurious interest rates.

In The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the seventh circle of hell for people who charged usurious interest rates.

But already my desire and my will were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed, by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars

Archie asked me if I knew Dante's definition of hell...Proximity without intimacy, he said.

But truth is not the only merit that a metaphysic can possess. It may have beauty, and this is certainly to be found in Plotinus; there are passages that remind one of the later cantos of Dante's Para- diso, and of almost nothing else in literature. Now

The greatest sorrow, said Dante, was to recall in misery the time when we were happy. The sadness of a lost happy time.

Dante subsumed everything, and so, in a sense, secularized nothing.

I have written a lot about the fine arts, but I'd never written about the literary arts, and so on some level Dante really, you know, spoke to me, as new ground but also familiar ground.

The founding father of Albanian literature is the nineteenth-century writer Naim Frasheri. Without having the greatness of Dante or Shakespeare, he is nonetheless the founder, the emblematic character. He wrote long epic poems, as well as lyrical poetry, to awaken the national consciousness of Albania.

I was fortunate that Yale has a very open and creative law school. I took many courses outside the law school, and every semester, the students had a literature reading group. I was asked to lead one on 'Dante and the Concept of Justice,' and it was around that time that I began writing the novel.

Hollywood was a lot like a Charles dickens novel. It could be the best of places; it could be the worst of places. Machiavelli, Dante, Shakespeare… all would have felt at home here. Tinseltown was a bustling contradiction. It was a modern day Zanzabar; a slavemarket were souls were bartered, sold, and stolen seemingly on the hour, every hour. It was also a place of incredible genius and beauty, where dreams still came true.