Dante Alighieri Quotes

Beatrice tells Dante in Paradise, Canto XVIII: “Change your thoughts. Consider that I dwell with Him who lifts the weight of every wrong.” (L. 5-6)

Dante’s Cantos average about 140 lines. As a general thing he requires no more than twenty or thirty lines to identify the sinner and to describe the punishment.

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].

All Being within this order, by the laws
of its own nature is impelled to find
its proper station round its Primal Cause.

Thus every nature moves across the tide
of the great sea of being to its own port,
each with its given instinct as its guide.

Hermafrodito foi nosso pecado;
Mas tendo as leis humanas transgredido
84 De brutos no apetite desregrado,

"If you, free as you are of every weight
had stayed below, then that would be as strange
as living flame on earth remaining still."

And then she turned her gaze up toward the heavens.

"Amor, ch'al cor gentile ratto s'apprende
prese costui de la bella persona
che mi fu tolta; e 'l modo ancor m'offende.

Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,
Mi prese del costui piacer sì forte,
Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona..."

"Love, which quickly arrests the gentle heart,
Seized him with my beautiful form
That was taken from me, in a manner which still grieves me.

Love, which pardons no beloved from loving,
took me so strongly with delight in him
That, as you see, it still abandons me not..."

That infinite and indescribable good
which is there above races as swiftly
to love as a ray of light to a bright body.

It gives of itself according to the ardor
it finds, so that as charity spreads farther
the eternal good increases upon it,

and the more souls there are who love, up there,
the more there are to love well, and the more love
they reflect to each other, as in a mirror.

FIRST CIRCLE. Here they find the VIRTUOUS PAGANS. They were born without the light of Christ’s revelation, and, therefore, they cannot come into the light of God, but they are not tormented. Their only pain is that they have no hope.

It cannot be that any eye, still clutched by mist and murkiness, should meet the first of ministers who’ll come from Paradise.

Sí me entiendes, deben reanimarte mis palabras.

The man who lies asleep will never waken fame, and his desire and all his life drift past him like a dream, and the traces of his memory fade from time like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.

¡Oh vosotros, que gozáis de sano entendimiento; descubrid la doctrina que se oculta bajo el velo de tan extraños versos!

You’ll leave behind you all you hold most dear. And this will be the grievous arrow barb that exile, first of all, will shoot your way.

O conscience, upright and stainless, how bitter a sting to thee is a little fault!