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nearing its desired end, → our intellect sinks into an abyss so deep that memory fails to follow it.
I want to know if, in your eyes, one can amend for unkept vows with other acts— good works your balance will not find too scant.”
“The greatest gift the magnanimity → of God, as He created, gave, the gift most suited to His goodness, gift that He 22 most prizes, was the freedom of the will;
he who hears, but does not hold what he has heard, learns nothing.
intellect has not matured within the flame of love.
Only man’s sin annuls man’s liberty, → makes him unlike the Highest Good, so that, in him, the brightness of Its light is dimmed; 82 and man cannot regain his dignity unless, where sin left emptiness, man fills → that void with just amends for evil pleasure.
for every other means fell short of justice, except the way whereby the Son of God humbled Himself when He became incarnate.
lament for vengeance well-deserved will follow on the wrongs you are to suffer.
How bright within themselves must be the lights → I saw on entering the Sun, for they were known to me by splendor, not by color!
for in the smile that glowed within her eyes, I thought that I—with mine—had touched the height of both my blessedness and paradise.
the arrow one foresees arrives more gently.”
Men once were used to waging war with swords; → now war means seizing here and there the bread the tender Father would deny to none.
‘A man is born along → the shoreline of the Indus River; none is there to speak or teach or write of Christ. 73 And he, as far as human reason sees, in all he seeks and all he does is good: there is no sin within his life or speech. 76 And that man dies unbaptized, without faith. Where is this justice then that would condemn him? Where is his sin if he does not believe?’
My pen leaps over it; I do not write: our fantasy and, all the more so, speech are far too gross for painting folds so deep.
“If without miracles the world → was turned to Christianity, that is so great a miracle that all the rest 109 are not its hundredth part: for you were poor and hungry when you found the field and sowed the good plant—once a vine and now a thorn.”
three Eternal Persons, → and these I do believe to be one essence, so single and threefold as to allow 142 both is and are.
From this you see that blessedness depends upon the act of vision, not upon the act of love—which is a consequence;
God, from which no thing is hidden,
Christ did not say to his first company: ‘Go, and preach idle stories to the world’; but he gave them the teaching that is truth, 112 and truth alone was sounded when they spoke; and thus, to battle to enkindle faith, the Gospels served them as both shield and lance.
the heaven of pure light, 40 light of the intellect, light filled with love, love of true good, love filled with happiness, a happiness surpassing every sweetness.
When they climbed down into that flowering Rose, from rank to rank, they shared that peace and ardor → which they had gained, with wings that fanned their sides. 19 Nor did so vast a throng in flight, although it interposed between the candid Rose and light above, obstruct the sight or splendor, 22 because the light of God so penetrates → the universe according to the worth of every part, that no thing can impede it.
the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.
The pilgrim is stupefied on one side by the words of the spirit (who has not yet identified himself), and on the other by the intensity of the joy that irradiates Beatrice’s smile. This is the first time in the Heaven of Mars that Dante has glimpsed her smile, which is continually enhanced as they ascend from heaven to heaven.
