Dante Alighieri Quotes - Page 6

Infinite goodness has such wide arms.

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

Here let dead poetry rise once more to life.

My course is set for an uncharted sea.

Honor is the greatest poet.

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.

Justice does not descend from its own pinnacle.

Reason flies When following the senses, on clipped wings.

Seldom indeed does human virtue rise From trunk to branch.

As fall the light autumnal leaves, one still the other following, till the bough strews all its honors on the earth below.

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, Thy first effects, are dearer in Thine eyes, Hallowed Thy name be and the Power thereof, By every creature, as right meet it is We praise the tender effluence of Thy love. Let come to us, let come Thy kingdom's peace.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle" ("and thence we came forth to see again the stars")

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.

I made my own house be my gallows.

How come I never meet any nice girls?

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.

But if, as morning rises, dreams are true.

Nothing which is harmonized by the bond of the Muse can be changed from its own to another language without destroying its sweetness

Less shame a greater fault would palliate.

Deed done is well begun.