Dante alighieri quotes

The devil is not as black as he is painted.

The heavens call to you, and circle about you, displaying to you their eternal splendors, and your eye gazes only to earth.

In that book which is my memory, On the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you, Appear the words, ‘Here begins a new life’.

Here let dead poetry rise once more to life.

The day that man allows true love to appear, those things which are well made will fall into cofusion and will overturn everything we believe to be right and true.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. [This miserable mode Maintain the melancholy souls of those Who lived withouten infamy or praise.]

The secret of getting things done is to act!

Follow your own star!

If you give people light, they will find their own way.

Love is the source of every virtue in you and of every deed which deserves punishment.

It is necessity and not pleasure that compels us.

Eternal love made me.

There is a gentle thought that often springs to life in me, because it speaks of you.

Honor is the greatest poet.

Open your mind to what I shall disclose, and hold it fast within you; he who hears, but does not hold what he has heard, learns nothing. Beatrice - Canto V 40-42

If your world isn't right, the cause is in you.

For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.

Three things remain with us from paradise: stars, flowers and children.

The path to paradise begins in hell.

My course is set for an uncharted sea.

Justice does not descend from its own pinnacle.

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

As flowerlets drooped and puckered in the night turn up to the returning sun and spread their petals wide on his new warmth and light-just so my wilted spirits rose again and such a heat of zeal surged through my veins that I was born anew.

The mind which is created quick to love, is responsive to everything that is pleasing, soon as by pleasure it is awakened into activity. Your apprehensive faculty draws an impression from a real object, and unfolds it within you, so that it makes the mind turn thereto. And if, being turned, it inclines towards it, that inclination is love; that is nature, which through pleasure is bound anew within you.

... Nessun maggior dolore Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria. (There is no greater pain than to remember a happy time when one is in misery.)

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.

Without hope we live in desire.

He is not always at ease who laughs.

In that part of the book of my memory before which little can be read, there is a heading, which says: ‘Incipit vita nova: Here begins the new life’.

The mouse had fallen in with evil cats.

So that the Universe felt love, by which, as somebelieve, the world has many times been turned to chaos. And at that moment this ancient rock, here and elsewhere, fell broken into pieces.

It is no learning to understand what you do not retain.

They yearn for what they fear for.

Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path. How hard it is to tell what it was like, this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn (the thought of it brings back all my old fears), a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer. But if I would show the good that came of it I must talk about things other than the good.

Remember tonight... for it is the beginning of always.

A rapid bolt will rend the clouds apart, and every single White be seared by wounds. I tell you this. I want it all to hurt.

Nature is the art of God.

He who know most grieves most for wasted time.

The more perfect a thing is, the more susceptible to good and bad treatment it is.

Everywhere is here and every when is now.

The heaven that rolls around cries aloud to you while it displays its eternal beauties, and yet your eyes are fixed upon the earth alone.

Infinite goodness has such wide arms.

Because there is no man who can be true and just judge of himself, so much will self-love deceive him.

He listens well who takes notes.

I affirm that gain is precisely that which comes oftener to the bad man than to the good; for illegitimate gains never come to the good at all, because they reject them. And lawful gains rarely come to the good, because, since much anxious care is needful thereto, and the anxious care of the good man is directed to weightier matters, rarely does the good man give sufficient attention thereto. Wherefore it is clear that in every way the advent of these riches is iniquitous.

Unity in wills cannot be unless there is one will dominating and ruling all the rest to oneness... wills of mortals have need of a directive principle... therefore for the well-being of the world, there should be a monarchy.

I am searching for that which every man seeks-peace and rest.

Blessed are the peacemakers, For they have freed themselves from sinful wrath.

Consider that this day ne'er dawns again.

I am the way into the city of woe. I am the way to a forsaken people. I am the way into eternal sorrow. Sacred justice moved my architect. I was raised here by divine omnipotence, Primordial love and ultimate intellect. Only those elements time cannot wear Were made before me, and beyond time I stand. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

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.

Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, and now that, and changes name as it changes direction.

Where the way is hardest, there go thou; Follow your own path and let people talk.

Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from The Eternal.

Follow your path, and let the people talk.

L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle (The love that moves the sun and the other stars)

The wisest are the most annoyed at the loss of time.

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.

Love can move the Sun and the stars.

In each fire there is a spirit; Each one is wrapped in what is burning him.

Be like a solid tower whose brave height remains unmoved by all the winds that blow; the man who lets his thoughts be turned aside by one thing or another, will lose sight of his true goal, his mind sapped of its strength.

Imagination, that dost so abstract us That we are not aware, not even when A thousand trumpets sound about our ears!

This mountain is so formed that it is always wearisome when one begins the ascent, but becomes easier the higher one climbs.

Pride, envy, avarice - these are the sparks have set on fire the hearts of all men.

Abandon every hope, you who enter.

The human race is in the best condition when it has the greatest degree of liberty.

And we came forth to contemplate the stars.

O mortal men, be wary of how ye judge.

I wept not — so to stone I grew within.

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

He loves but little who can say and count in words, how much he loves.

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

Beauty awakens the soul to act.

From a small spark, Great flame has risen.

Do not desert me when I need you most. And if we can't go on together, let's retrace our steps as quickly as we can.

Here my powers rest from their high fantasy, but already I could feel my being turned- instinct and intellect balanced equally. as in a wheel whose motion nothing jars- by the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.

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.

No one thinks of how much blood it costs.

Often a retrospect delights the mind.

A backward glance can often lift the heart.

Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground.

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

To get back up to the shining world from there My guide and I went into that hidden tunnel, And Following its path, we took no care To rest, but climbed: he first, then I-so far, through a round aperture I saw appear Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears, Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars.

There is no greater pain than to remember, in our present grief, past happiness.

I did not die, and yet I lost life’s breath

We are but a day in this world, and in that day the fashion is changed a thousand times: all seek liberty, yet all deprive themselves of it.

From a little spark may burst a flame.

Lost are we, and are only so far punished, That without hope we live on in desire.

And here Dante describes an evidently spherical world... "The lamp of the world [the sun] rises to mortals through different passages; but through that which joins four circles with three crosses [the position of the rising sun at the vernal equinox] it issues with a better course and conjoined with better stars, and tempers and stamps the wax of the world more after its own fashion. Although such an outlet had made morning there and evening here, and all the hemisphere there was bright, and the other dark..."

In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.

Now you know how much my love for you burns deep in me when I forget about our emptiness, and deal with shadows as with solid things.

The whole universe is but the footprint of the Divine goodness.

Seldom indeed does human virtue rise From trunk to branch.

I was so full of sleep at the time that I left the true way.

But if, as morning rises, dreams are true.

...ma gia volgena il mio disio e'l velle si come rota ch'igualmente e mossa, l'amor che move: i sole e l'altre stelle ...as a wheel turns smoothtly, free from jars, my will and my desire were turned by love, The love that moves the sun and the other stars.

Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips but few in their minds.

...Everything that is, desires to be. As we act, we unfold our being. Enjoyment naturally follows, for a thing desired always brings delight.

If you follow your natural bent;you will definitely go to heaven

Do not be afraid; our fate Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.

Mankind is at its best when it is most free.

Come, follow me, and leave the world to its babblings.

You can stay and die or you can walk your ugly ass back through that gate. It's your call, pal.

My soul tasted that heavenly food, which gives new appetite while it satiates.

If thou follow thy star, thou canst not fail of glorious heaven.

Because your question searches for deep meaning, I shall explain in simple words

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

I found myself within a forest dark.

A mighty flame followeth a tiny spark.

This miserable way is taken by the sorry souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise. They now commingle with the coward angels, the company of those who were not rebels nor faithful to their God, but stood apart. The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened, have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them - even the wicked cannot glory in them.

Small projects need much more help than great.

Love insists the loved loves back

I care not where my body may take me as long as my soul is embarked on a meaningful journey.

That infinite and indescribable good which is there above races as swiftly to love as a ray of light to a bright body.It gives of itself according to the ardor it finds, so that as charity spreads farther the eternal good increases upon it,and the more souls there are who love, up there, the more there are to love well, and the more love they reflect to each other, as in a mirror.

O you proud Christians, wretched souls and small,/ Who by the dim lights of your twisted minds/ Believe you prosper even as you fall,/ Can you not see that we are worms, each one/ Born to become the angelic butterfly/ That flies defenseless to the Judgement Throne?

Oh foolish desires of mortals! How weak are the reasons that lead us to not take off our flight from the ground.

I love to doubt as well as know.

If a thief helps a poor man out of the spoils of his thieving, we must not call that charity.

Compassion is not a passion; rather a noble disposition of the soul, made ready to receive love, mercy, and other charitable passions.

Astrology, the noblest of sciences.

But the stars that marked our starting fall away. We must go deeper into greater pain, for it is not permitted that we stay.

He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it.

Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

Love and the gentle heart are but the same thing.

The more souls who resonate together, the greater the intensity of their love... and, mirror-like... each soul reflects the other.