Dante Alighieri Quotes

Ah! what caution must men use With those who look not at the deed alone, But spy into the thoughts with subtle skill!

T. S. Eliot said that the last cantos of Heaven were as great as poetry can ever get.

No inferno os lugares mais quentes são reservados àqueles que escolheram a neutralidade em tempo de crise.

e così dimorai alquanti dì con disiderio di dire e con paura di cominciare.

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

placing his hand on mine, with a calm expression, that comforted me,

A ciascun’alma presa e gentil core
Nel cui cospetto ven lo dir presente,
In ciò che mi rescrivan suo parvente,
Salute in lor segnor, cioè Amore.

Già eran quasi che atterzate l’ore
Del tempo che onne stella n’è lucente,
Quando m’apparve Amor subitamente,
Cui essenza membrar mi dà orrore.

Allegro mi sembrava Amor tenendo
Meo core in mano, e ne le braccia avea
Madonna involta in un drappo dormendo.

Poi la svegliava, e d’esto core ardendo
Lei paventosa umilmente pascea:
Appresso gir lo ne vedea piangendo.

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.” — Dante Alighieri

...He who's distracted answers clumsily.

Mezcladas están con aquel malvado coro de los Angeles que ni fueron rebeldes a Dios, ni fieles, sino sólo para sí fueron.

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

"The broken branch hissed loudly, and then that
wind was converted into these words: "Briefly will
you be answered.
When the fierce soul departs from the body from
which it has uprooted itself, Minos sends it to the
seventh mouth.
It falls into the wood, and no place is assigned to
it, but where chance hurls it, there it sprouts like a
grain of spelt.
It grows into a shoot, then a woody plant; the
Harpies, feeding on its leaves, give it pain and a
window for the pain.
Like the others, we will come for our remains, but
not so that any may put them on again, for it is not
just to have what one has taken from oneself.
Here we will drag them, and through the sad
wood our corpses will hang, each on the thornbrush
of the soul that harmed it.

Al tornar de la mente, che si chiuse
dinanzi a la pietà d'i due cognati,
che di trestizia tutto mi confuse,

novi tormenti e novi tormentati
mi veggio intorno, come ch'io mi mova
e ch'io mi volga, e come che io guati.

High justice would in no way be debased
if ardent love should cancel instantly
the debts these penitents must satisfy.

up yonder in the guzzling Germans’ land,