Books have led some to learning and others to madness. - Petrarch

Having indeed seen so many things and considered so much, I have finally begun to understand how many are these desires with which the human species burns. Lest you consider me immune to all the sins of men, there is one implacable passion that holds me which so far I have been neither able nor willing to check, for I flatter myself that the desire for noble things is not dishonorable. Do you wish to hear the nature of this disease? I am unable to satisfy my thirst for books.

S'amor non è, che dunque è quel ch'io sento?
Ma s'egli è amor, perdio, che cosa et quale?
Se bona, onde l'effecto aspro mortale?
Se ria, onde sí dolce ogni tormento?

Now that the time that calls me to depart
draws near, I think, or will not be too long,
like one whom losses make acute and wise,
I keep on wondering where I left the way
that leads to a safe haven on the right:
and on the one hand I am stung
by shame and sorrow making me turn back;
and on the other cannot break
the habit of a pleasure grown so strong
that now it dares to play for time with death.