Dante Alighieri Quotes

Thou shalt prove how salty tastes another’s bread, and how hard a path it is to go up and down another’s stairs.

Before me there were no created things, Only eternity, and I too, last eternal. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!

Come, quando i vapori umidi e spessi
A diradar cominciansi, la spera
Del sol debilemente entra per essi....

"To me she said: "There is no sorrow greater than, in times of misery, to hold at heart the memory of happiness.

Noi siam venuti al loco ov'i' t'ho detto
che tu vedrai le genti dolorose
c'hanno perduto il ben de l'intelletto.

We to the place have come, where I have told thee
Thou shalt behold the people dolorous
Who have foregone the good of intellect.

"Aquele em vida foi arrogante, nada de bom recordamos dele, por isso está entre os furiosos. Muitos daqueles que lá na Terra foram grandes senhores aqui estão como porcos no chiqueiro, recebendo o mais vil desprezo." - Inferno Canto VIII

Fatti non foste a viver come bruti ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza.

Rejoice, Florence, seeing you are so great that over sea and land you flap your wings, and your name is widely known in Hell!

Amor ch'a null'amato amar perdona

Zákony sú, no kto sa ich chce chopiť?
Nik, lebo pastier prežúva si vpredu,
ale sám nemá rozštiepených kopýt.

A ľudia, zrúc, že ten, kto vedie čriedu,
mieri len k dobrám, po nich sami bažia ‒
sa k inej paši sami nepovedú!

No fuisteis criados para vivir como bestias
sino para seguir en pos de la virtud y la sabiduría.

The hottest places in Hell are reserved for good people who — in times of moral crisis — choose to do nothing.

Oh blind, oh ignorant, self-seeking cupidity which spurs as so in the short mortal life and steeps as through all eternity.

Whoever is so misguided as to think that the place of his birth is the most delightful spot under the sun may also believe that his own language — his mother tongue, that is — is pre-eminent among all others; and, as a result he may believe that his language was also Adam’s. To me, however, the whole world is a homeland, like the sea to fish — though I drank from the Arno before cutting my teeth, and love Florence so much that, because I loved her suffer exile unjustly — and I will weight the balance of my judgment more with reason than with [sensation].

Like those who see so clearly while they dream that marks of feeling, when their dreaming ends, remain, though nothing more returns to mind, so I am now. For nearly all I saw has gone, even if, still, within my heart, there drops the sweetness that was born from that.