O sun which clears all mists from troubled sight, such joy attends your rising that I feel as grateful to the dark as to the light. - Dante Alighieri

Repentance fails? There can’t be absolution, nor penitence when willing ill goes on. That is, by contradiction, impossibile.

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].

No tienen éstos de muerte esperanza, y su vida obcecada es tan rastrera, que envidiosos están de cualquier suerte.