Dante Alighieri Quotes - Page 11

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

I presumed to fix my look on the eternal light so long that I consumed my sight thereon.

A fair request should be followed by the deed in silence.

Midway in our life's journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.

In the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray, Gone from the path direct.

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.

If anyone should want to know my name, I am called Leah. And I spend all my time weaving garlands of flowers with my fair hands, t o please me when I stand before the mirror; my sister Rachel sits all the day long before her own, and never moves away. She loves to contemplate her lovely eyes; I love to use my hands to adorn myself: her joy is in reflection, mine in act.

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.

These dwell among the blackest souls,loaded down deep by sins of differing types.If you sink far enough,you'll see them all.

The three Divine are in this hierarchy, First the Dominions, and the Virtues next; And the third order is that of the Powers. The in the dances twain penultimate The Principalities and Archangels wheel; The last is wholly of angelic sports. These orders upward all of them are gazing, And downward so prevail, that unto God They all attracted are and all attract.

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

Knowledge comes Of learning well retain'd, unfruitful else.

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

That with him were, what time the Love Divine

Justice divine has weighed: the doom is clear. All hope renounce, ye lost, who enter here.

Midway upon the journey of our life

What shall one do with the verse, if he knows not That?

Of my sowing such straw I reap. O human folk, why set the heart there where exclusion of partnership is necessary

When I had journeyed half of our life's way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray.

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.

In that part of the book of my memory before the which is little that can be read, there is a rubric, saying, Incipit Vita Nova. Under such rubric I find written many things; and among them the words which I purpose to copy into this little book; if not all of them, at the least their substance.