Ché bel fin fa chi ben amando more. - Petrarch

I closed the book*, angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly things who might long ago have learned from even the pagan philosophers that nothing is wonderful but the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself. Then, in truth, I was satisfied that I had seen enough of the mountain; I turned my inward eye upon myself, and from that time not a syllable fell from my lips until we reached the bottom again... [W]e look about us for what is to be found only within... How many times, think you, did I turn back that day, to glance at the summit of the mountain which seemed scarcely a cubit high compared with the range of human contemplation.

* Augustine's Confessions: 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.

Neither exhortations to virtue nor the argument of approaching death should divert us from literature; for in a good mind it excites the love of virtue, and dissipates, or at least diminishes, the fear of death.

Ik was op Amors aanval niet bedacht,
die Vrijdag, toen zijn pijlen mij doorstaken.
Hij kon zich meester van mijn leven maken
en kreeg mij daarna steeds meer in zijn macht.

Ik had niet van zijn wapenen verwacht
dat zij mijn hart zo hevig zouden raken,
nadat zij door zijn harde pantser braken:
de straf voor wie zich onverslaanbaar acht.

Nu laat ik mij door Amor ringeloren,
omdat ik mij vergeefs verzet bespaar
en hoop dat hij mijn bede zal verhoren.

Mijn enige verweer is hem te smeken,
niet om mijn vuur te doen bedaren, maar
om deze vlam bij haar ook te ontsteken.

(Ike Cialona)