Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The more souls who resonate together, the greater the intensity of their love... and, mirror-like... each soul reflects the other.
Nothing which is harmonized by the bond of the Muse can be changed from its own to another language without destroying its sweetness
Thou shall know by experience how salt the savor is of others' bread, and how sad a path it is to climb and descend another's stairs.
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.
Compassion is not a passion; rather a noble disposition of the soul, made ready to receive love, mercy, and other charitable passions.
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
I, answering in the end, began: 'Alas, how many yearning thoughts, what great desire, have lead them through such sorrow to their fate?
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.
Love, who insists that love shall mutual be, Link'd me to him with charm strong as our fates; Even now it leaves me not, as thou dost see.
Pure essence, and pure matter, and the two joined into one were shot forth without flaw, like three bright arrows from a three-string bow.
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.
All your renown is like the summer flower that blooms and dies; because the sunny glow which brings it forth, soon slays with parching power.
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
...Everything that is, desires to be. As we act, we unfold our being. Enjoyment naturally follows, for a thing desired always brings delight.
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.
As, pricked out with less and greater lights, between the poles of the universe, the Milky Way so gleameth white as to set very sages questioning.
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’.
When we encountered a band of souls coming along the barrier, and each was gazing at us in the evening people gaze at one another under the new moon
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’.
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.
... 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.)
As the geometer intently seeks to square the circle, but he cannot reach, through thought on thought, the principle he needs, so I searched that strange sight.
Sta come torre ferma, che non crolla Giammai la cima per soffiar de' venti. Be steadfast as a tower that doth not bend its stately summit to the tempest's shock.
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
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.
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.
Fame is not won on downy plumes nor under canopies; the man who consumes his days without obtaining it leaves such mark of himself on earth as smoke in air or foam on water.
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.
I saw a point that shone with light so keen, the eye that sees it cannot bear its blazing; the star that is for us the smallest one would seem a moon if placed beside this point.
Like the lark that soars in the air, first singing, then silent, content with the last sweetness that satiates it, such seemed to me that image, the imprint of the Eternal Pleasure.
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.
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.
The purpose of the whole [the Comedy] and of this portion [the Paradiso] is to remove those who are living in this life from the state of wretchedness, and to lead them to the state of blessedness.
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.]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
To course across more kindly waters now my talent's little vessel lifts her sails, leaving behind herself a sea so cruel; and what I sing will be that second kingdom, in which the human soul is cleansed of sin, becoming worthy of ascent to Heaven.
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?
He whom you see-along the downward arc- was William, and the land that mourns his death, for living Charles and Frederick, now laments; now he has learned how Heaven loves the just ruler, and he would show this outwardly as well, so radiantly visible.
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.
...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.
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.
O power of fantasy that steals our minds from things outside, to leave us unaware, although a thousand trumpets may blow loud--what stirs you if the senses show you nothing? Light stirs you, formed in Heaven, by itself, or by His will Who sends it down to us.