Petrarch Quotes - Page 2

Life in itself is short enough, but the physicians with their art, know to their amusement, how to make it still shorter.

A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.

The time will come when every change shall cease, This quick revolving wheel shall rest in peace: No summer then shall glow, not winter freeze; Nothing shall be to come, and nothing past, But an eternal now shall ever last.

Man has no greater enemy than himself. I have acted contrary to my sentiments and inclination; throughout our whole lives we do what we never intended, and what we proposed to do, we leave undone.

I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worst pursue.

The aged love what is practical while impetuous youth longs only for what is dazzling.

While life is in your body, you have the rein of all thoughts in your hands.

For style beyond the genius never dares.

I have taken pride in others, never in myself.

Virtue is health, vice is sickness.

Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.

Books never pall on me. They discourse with us, they take counsel with us, and are united to us by a certain living chatty familiarity. And not only does each book inspire the sense that it belongs to its readers, but it also suggests the name of others, and one begets the desire of the other.

Mere elegance of language can produce at best but an empty renown.

The end of doubt is the beginning of repose.

Hope is incredible to the slave of grief.

To be able to say how much love, is love but little.

If a hundred or a thousand people, all of the same age, of the same constitution and habits, were suddenly seized by the same illness, and one half of them were to place themselves under the care of doctors, such as they are in our time, whilst the other half entrusted themselves to Nature and to their own discretion, I have not the slightest doubt that there would be more cases of death amongst the former, and more cases of recovery among the latter.

Great errors seldom originate but with men of great minds.

I would have preferred to have been born in any other time than our own.

A good death does honour to a whole life.

He loves but lightly who his love can tell.

I rejoiced in my progress, mourned my weaknesses, and commiserated the universal instability of human conduct.

Wanting is not enough, long and you attain it.

I looked back at the summit of the mountain, which seemed but a cubit high in comparison with the height of human contemplation, were in not too often merged in the corruptions of the earth.

Continued work and application form my soul's nourishment. So soon as I commenced to rest and relax I should cease to live.