Petrarch Quotes

Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.

Man has not a greater enemy than himself.

You keep to your own ways and leave mine to me.

Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.

It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.

Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.

And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.

Love is the crowning grace of humanity.

For though I am a body of this earth, my firm desire is born from the stars.

Books have led some to learning and others to madness.

All pleasure in the world is a passing dream.

Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.

It is better to will the good than to know the truth.

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.

Books can warm the heart with friendly words and counsel, entering into a close relationship with us which is articulate and alive

Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds, and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.

Events appear sad, pleasant, or painful, not because they are so in reality, but because we believe them to be so and the light in which we look at them depends upon our own judgment.

Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.

Where you are is of no moment, but only what you are doing there. It is not the place that ennobles you, but you the place, and this only by doing that which is great and noble.

I saw the tracks of angels in the earth: the beauty of heaven walking by itself on the world.

Suspicion is the cancer of friendship.

Nothing mortal is enduring, and there is nothing sweet which does not presently end in bitterness.

Ruthless striving, overcomes everything.

I freeze and burn, love is bitter and sweet, my sighs are tempests and my tears are floods, I am in ecstasy and agony, I am possessed by memories of her and I am in exile from myself.

Who naught suspects is easily deceived.