Dante Alighieri Quotes (106 Quotes)

Thy soul is by vile fear assailed, which oft so overcasts a man, that he recoils from noblest resolution, like a beast at some false semblance in the twilight gloom.

There, pride, avarice, and envy are the tongues men know and heed, a Babel of depsair

And when he had put his hand on mine with a cheerful look, wherefrom I took courage, he brought me within to the secret things. Here sighs, laments, and deep wailings were resounding through the starless air; wherefore at first I wept thereat. Strange tongues, horrible utterances, words of woe, accents of anger, voices high and faint, and sounds of hands with them, were making a tumult which whirls always in that air forever dark, like the sand when the whirlwind breathes.

Ye who enter,abandon all hope.

They had their faces twisted toward their haunches and found it necessary to walk backward, because they could not see ahead of them. ...And since he wanted so to see ahead, he looks behind and walks a backward path.

As little flowers, which the chill of night has bent and huddled, when the white sun strikes, grow straight and open fully on their stems, so did I, too, with my exhausted force.

And as he, who with laboring breath has escaped from the deep to the shore, turns to the perilous waters and gazes.

They yearn for what they fear for.

As phantoms frighten beasts when shadows fall.

For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.

Until he shall have driven her back to Hell,

From there we came outside and saw the stars

I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightfoward pathway had been lost. Ah me! How hard a thing is to say, what was this forest savage, rough, and stern, which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is little more...

Here pity only lives when it is dead - Virgil

Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice.

If i thought i was replying to someone who would every return to the world, this flame would cease it's flickering. But since no one has returned from these depths alive, if what I've heard is true, I will answer you without fear of infamy.

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.

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.

No dirsas trompeti vin,š iztaisi-ja.

Lying in a featherbed will not bring you 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.

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

Omnes relinquite spes, o vos intrantes

Oh blind, oh ignorant, self-seeking cupidity whcih spurs as so in the short mortal life and steeps as through all eternity.

On march the banners of the King of Hell.

That with him were, what time the Love Divine

One ought to be afraid of nothing other then things possessed of power to do us harm, but things innoucuous need not be feared.

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 wish to hear such baseness is degrading.

The devil is not as black as he is painted.

Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.

The man who lies asleep will never waken fame, and his desire and all his life drift past him like a dream, and the traces of his memory fade from time like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.

There is no greater sorrow then to recall our times of joy in wretchedness.

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.

Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people

The more a thing is perfect, the more if feels pleasure and pain.

Love and the gentle heart are one thing,
just as the poet says in his verse,
each from the other one as well divorced
as reason from the mind's reasoning.

The customs and fashions of men change like leaves on the bough, some of which go and others come.

You shall find out how salt is the taste of another man's bread, and how hard is the way up and down another man's stairs.

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

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

Uncouth tongues, horrible shriekings of despair, Shrill and faint voices, cries of pain and rage, And, with it all, smiting of hands, were there, Making a tumult, nothing could assuage, To swirl in the air that knows not day or night, Like sand withi

He listens well who takes notes.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here (words inscribed over the gates of Hell

A mighty flame followeth a tiny spark.

They find seven cornices on which penitent and redeemed sinners are cleansed by the grace of God. On the first cornice, that of Pride, the proud are learning humility Our Father, dwelling in the Heavens, nowise As circumscribed, but as the things above,

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

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 road of my life I awoke in the dark wood where the true way was wholly lost

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

All hope abandon, ye who enter here!