Dante Alighieri Quotes

Nature is the art of God. Dante Alighieri

From a little spark may burst a flame. Dante Alighieri

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. Dante Alighieri

A mighty flame followeth a tiny spark. Dante Alighieri

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

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. Dante Alighieri

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

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

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

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

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. Dante Alighieri

The sad souls of those who lived without blame and without praise. Dante Alighieri

“Do not be afraid; our fate
Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“My course is set for an uncharted sea.”
― Dante Alighieri

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”
― Dante Alighieri

“There is no greater sorrow
Than to recall a happy time
When miserable.”
― Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri Quotes

“The path to paradise begins in hell.”
― Dante Alighieri

“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’.”
― Dante Alighieri, Vita Nuova

“Remember tonight... for it is the beginning of always”
― Dante

Dante Alighieri Inferno

“All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

Dante Alighieri Quotes

“The wisest are the most annoyed at the loss of time.”
― Dante Alighieri

"Love, which quickly arrests the gentle heart,
Seized him with my beautiful form
That was taken from me, in a manner which still grieves me.
Love, which pardons no beloved from loving,
took me so strongly with delight in him
That, as you see, it still abandons me not...”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno: A New Verse Translation

“The devil is not as black as he is painted.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“Love insists the loved loves back”
― Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri Inferno

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

“Beauty awakens the soul to act.”
― Dante Alighieri

“They yearn for what they fear for.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“There is no greater sorrow then to recall our times of joy in wretchedness.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“Consider your origin. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice. ”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“And we came forth to contemplate the stars.”
― Dante Alighiere

“There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery the time when we were happy.”
― Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri Inferno

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“Love, that moves the sun and the other stars”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people”
― Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“From there we came outside and saw the stars”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“And I — my head oppressed by horror — said:
"Master, what is it that I hear? Who are
those people so defeated by their pain?"
And he to me: "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.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“No sadness is greater than in misery to rehearse memories of joy.”
― Dante Alighieri

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

“Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground”
― Dante Alighieri

“There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“I felt for the tormented whirlwinds
Damned for their carnal sins
Committed when they let their passions rule their reason.”
― Dante Alighieri

“Because your question searches for deep meaning,
I shall explain in simple words”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“Lost are we, and are only so far punished,
That without hope we live on in desire.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“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.”
― Dante, Paradiso

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

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to the
other shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“Apparuit iam beatitudo vestra,”
― Dante Alighieri, Vita Nuova

“Thus you may understand that love alone
is the true seed of every merit in you,
and of all acts for which you must atone.”
― Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio

“Nessun maggior dolore
che ricordarsi del tempo felice
nella miseria...”
― Dante Alighieri , The Divine Comedy

“I did not die, and yet I lost life’s breath”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“He woke her then, and trembling and obedient, she ate that burning heart out of his hand. Weeping, I saw him then depart from me. Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for her? Find nourishment in the very sight of her? I think so. But would she see through the bars of his plight, and ache for him?”
― Dante Alighieri edited

“It was the hour of morning,
when the sun mounts with those stars
that shone with it when God's own love
first set in motion those fair things”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“I am the way into the city of woe,
I am the way into eternal pain,
I am the way to go among the lost.
Justice caused my high architect to move,
Divine omnipotence created me,
The highest wisdom, and the primal love.
But those that last forever—as do I.
Abandon all hope you who enter here.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

Before me there were no created things

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio

“He is, most of all, l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“I wept not, so to stone within I grew.”
― Dante Alighieri

“As one who sees in dreams and wakes to find the emotional impression of his vision still powerful while its parts fade from his mind - Just such am I, having lost nearly all the vision itself, while in my heart I feel the sweetness of it yet distill and fall.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“Here sighs and cries and shrieks of lamentation
echoed throughout the starless air of Hell;
at first these sounds resounding made me weep:
tongues confused, a language strained in anguish
with cadences of anger, shrill outcries
and raucous groans that joined with sounds of hands,
raising a whirling storm that turns itself
forever through that air of endless black,
like grains of sand swirling when a whirlwind blows.
And I, in the midst of all this circling horror,
began, "Teacher, what are these sounds I hear?
What souls are these so overwhelmed by grief?"
And he to me: "This wretched state of being
is the fate of those sad souls who lived a life
but lived it with no blame and with no praise.
They are mixed with that repulsive choir of angels
neither faithful nor unfaithful to their God,
who undecided stood but for themselves.
Heaven, to keep its beauty, cast them out,
but even Hell itself would not receive them,
for fear the damned might glory over them."
And I. "Master, what torments do they suffer
that force them to lament so bitterly?"
He answered: "I will tell you in few words:
these wretches have no hope of truly dying,
and this blind life they lead is so abject
it makes them envy every other fate.
The world will not record their having been there;
Heaven's mercy and its justice turn from them.
Let's not discuss them; look and pass them by...”
― Dante Alighieri

“At grief so deep the tongue must wag in vain; the language of our sense and memory lacks the vocabulary of such pain.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“One ought to be afraid of nothing other then things possessed of power to do us harm, but things innoucuous need not be feared.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“There is a gentle thought that often springs
to life in me, because it speaks of you.”
― Dante Alighieri

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“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”
― Dante

“Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn wood this was, which in my thought renews the fear!”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

"We were reading one day, to pass the time,
of Lancelot, how love had seized him.
We were alone, and without any suspicion
And time and time again our eyes would meet
over that literature, and our faces paled,
and yet one point alone won us.
When we had read how the desired smile
was kissed by so true a lover,
This one, who never shall be parted from me,
kissed my mouth, all a-tremble.
Gallehault was the book and he who wrote it
That day we read no further.”
― Dante Alighieri

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri

“Love, which absolves no one beloved from loving,
seized me so strongly with his charm that,
as you see, it has not left me yet.

Love brought us to one death.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“I, answering in the end, began: 'Alas,
how many yearning thoughts, what great desire,
have lead them through such sorrow to their fate?”
― Dante Alighieri

“Those ancients who in poetry presented
the golden age, who sang its happy state,
perhaps, in their Parnassus, dreamt this place.
Here, mankind's root was innocent; and here
were every fruit and never-ending spring;
these streams--the nectar of which poets sing.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“Perceive ye not that we are worms, designed
To form the angelic butterfly, that goes
To judgment, leaving all defence behind?
Why doth your mind take such exalted pose,
Since ye, disabled, are as insects, mean
As worm which never transformation knows?”
― Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio

“If the present world go astray, the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“There, pride, avarice, and envy are the tongues men know and heed, a Babel of depsair”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“all things created have an order in themselves, and this begets the form that lets the universe resemble God.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

“Through me is the way to the city of woe.
Through me is the way to sorrow eternal.
Through me is the way to the lost below. Justice moved my architect supernal.
I was constructed by divine power,
supreme wisdom, and love primordial.
Before me no created things were.
Save those eternal, and eternal I abide.
Abandon all hope, you who enter.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“This mountain is so formed that it is always wearisome when one begins the ascent, but becomes easier the higher one climbs.”
― Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“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...”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“Oh blind, oh ignorant, self-seeking cupidity whcih spurs as so in the short mortal life and steeps as through all eternity.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“The weapons of divine justice are blunted by the confession and sorrow of the offender.”
― Dante, The Divine Comedy II: Purgatory

“O grace abounding and allowing me to dare
to fix my gaze on the Eternal Light,

so deep my vision was consumed in it!

I saw how it contains within its depths
all things bound in a single book by love
of which creation is the scattered leaves:

how substance, accident, and their relation
were fused in such a way that what I now
describe is but a glimmer of that Light.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“Through me the way into the suffering city,
Through me the way into eternal pain,
Through me the way that runs among the lost.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“The broken branch hissed loudly, and then that
wind was converted into these words: "Briefly will
you be answered.
When the fierce soul departs from the body from
which it has uprooted itself, Minos sends it to the
seventh mouth.
It falls into the wood, and no place is assigned to
it, but where chance hurls it, there it sprouts like a
grain of spelt.
It grows into a shoot, then a woody plant; the
Harpies, feeding on its leaves, give it pain and a
window for the pain.
Like the others, we will come for our remains, but
not so that any may put them on again, for it is not
just to have what one has taken from oneself.
Here we will drag them, and through the sad
wood our corpses will hang, each on the thornbrush
of the soul that harmed it.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“Before me things created were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”
― Dante Alighieri

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“Now you must cast aside your laziness,"
my master said, "for he who rests on down
or under covers cannot come to fame;
and he who spends his life without renown
leaves such a vestige of himself on earth
as smoke bequeaths to air or foam to water.
Therefore, get up; defeat your breathlessness
with spirit that can win all battles if
the body's heaviness does not deter it.
A longer ladder still is to be climbed;
it's not enough to have left them behind;
if you have understood, now profit from it.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy