Dante Alighieri Quotes

“Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.

How hard it is to tell what it was like,
this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn
(the thought of it brings back all my old fears),

a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer.
But if I would show the good that came of it
I must talk about things other than the good.”
― Dante Alighieri

“Not like Homer would I write,
Not like Dante if I might,
Not like Shakespeare at his best,
Not like Goethe or the rest,
Like myself, however small,
Like myself, or not at all.”
― William Allingham, Blackberries

“Here pity only lives when it is dead - Virgil”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“Through me is the way to the city of woe.
Through me is the way to sorrow eternal.
Through me is the way to the lost below. Justice moved my architect supernal.
I was constructed by divine power,
supreme wisdom, and love primordial.
Before me no created things were.
Save those eternal, and eternal I abide.
Abandon all hope, you who enter.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“There is no greater sorrow
than thinking back upon a happy time
in misery--”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“your soul has been assailed by cowardice,
which often weighs so heavily on a man--
distracting him from honorable trials--
as phantoms frighten beasts when shadows fall.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“Gonindu-ne-o prin cetăți închise
din loc în loc, va-mpinge-o-n Iad de veci,
de unde-ntâi invidia ne-o trimise.

Spre-a ta scăpare cred și judec deci
să-ți fiu conducător, și te voi scoate
de-aici, făcând prin loc etern să treci,

s-auzi cum urlă desperate gloate,
să vezi și-antice duhuri osândite,
ce-a doua moarte-a lor și-o strigă toate.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur michi.”
― Dante Alighieri, La vita nuova

“Virgil, ești tu? Fântâna ești, al cării
torent - îi zisei cu rușine-acum-
bogat pornit-a fluviul cuvântării?

tu marea faclă-n veci pe-al artei drum!
deci fie-mi de-ajutor iubirea vie
și studiul lung în dulcele-ți volum.

Părinte-mi ești, maestru-mi ești tu mie,
tu singur ești acel ce-a dat o viață
frumosului meu stil ce-mi e mândrie.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“Și ca și-acel ce nu mai vrea ce-a vrut,
schimbând prin noul gând pe cele-avute,
așa că lasă totul ce-a-nceput,

așa și eu sub poala coastei mute
gândind îmi mistuii întreaga vrere
ce-ntâi, spre-a-ncepe, atât mi-a fost de iute.

-De-ți prind din vorbe bine-a ta durere-
răspunse umbra cea mărinimoasă-
ți-e sufletul curpins de-acea scădere,

ce-abate-ades de ținta sa frumoasă
pe om, astfel (oprind) ca năzărirea
nălucii lui pe-o bestie fricoasă.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“Two unusual examples of the Gemini type in the field of letters are Dante and Bernard Shaw. Dante wrote his Inferno so that he could show in luminous verbiage all his enemies roasting in the pits of perdition. The Shavian humor has about it the bite of shallowness. It is not the deep laughter of the gods who understand all, but the shallow titillating laughter of mortals who understand not even themselves.”
― Manly P. Hall

“Iubirea-aceeași moarte ne-a sortit :
străfund de iad pe ucigaș l-așteaptă.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“O, câte vise și ce dor de viață
i-a-mpins, grăii, pe aceștia spre mormânt!”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“Inferno was for learning about the nature of our sins. Purgatorio is for learning how to overcome our tendencies to fall victim to them. Understanding our dilemma is important, but it's not enough. What we do with that understanding makes the difference between life and death. Humility is the foundation of all spiritual progress. Humility builds resilience. Stop thinking of yourself as the center of your world you will find it becomes easier to endure life's setbacks. Plus, you will in time become more grateful, more merciful, and more loving.”
― Rod Dreher, How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem

“Dante is certainly not, as one sometimes hears said, vindictive, spiteful, sadistic. He is not merely engaged in score settling with old adversaries by assigning them to hell. The punishments in hell are horribly cruel, but the world in which he lived was horribly cruel. He had been sentenced to death both by burning and decapitation. Such sentences were almost routine. We think of the modern world as more civilised than his, but who could seriously argue that this is so, bearing in mind events on the world stage in the twentieth century?”
― Prue Shaw

“Theologically, Hell is out of favor now, but it still seems more "real" to most people than Fairyland or Atlantis or Valhalla or other much imagined places. This is because of the sheer mass and weight and breadth of ancient tradition, inventive fantasy, analytic argument, dictatorial dogma, and both simple and complex faith employed over a very long time- thousands of years- in the ongoing attempt to map the netherworld. The landscape of Hell is the largest shared construction project in imaginative history, and its chief architects have been creative giants- Homer, Virgil, Plato, Augustine, Dante, Bosch, Michelangelo, Milton, Goethe, Blake, and more.”
― Alice K. Turner, The History of Hell

“« Eine Liebe, die die Sonne bewegt und Sterne versetzt » -Ein missverstandener Dante- (« A love that moves the sun and alters the stars » -A misunderstood Dante)

I read « un amor che moverse il sole et altre stelle »”
― Alexandra Ineichen

“Soberba, inveja e avareza são as três chamas que os corações inflam. p.31”
― Dante Alighieri, A Divina Comédia - O Inferno

“Podes ver aqui, meu filho, a curta duração dos bens confiados à fortuna, pelos quais os humanos tanto se arrepelam; e que ouro todo que existe sob o céu ou que existiu não poderia dar a paz a uma só destas almas fatigadas. p.34”
― Dante Alighieri, A Divina Comédia - O Inferno

“Para o fundo ele deverá ele vir, entre os meus escravos, pois deu conselho fraudulento e por ele o tenho desde então pelos cabelos agarrado, pois não pode absolver-se quem não se arrepende, nem se pode a um só tempo querer-se e sentir-se repeso, pois não o permite a contradição. p.115”
― Dante Alighieri, A Divina Comédia - O Inferno

“Passámos além, eu e o meu guia, sobre o rochedo, até chegar ao outro arco que recobre o fosso, onde pagam as dívidas os que lançando a discórdia, de culpas se carregam. p.115”
― Dante Alighieri, A Divina Comédia - O Inferno

“Ca florile ce-atinse de răcoare
tânjesc, ci-n zori, sub ploaia de lumine,
se n-alță drept pe lujere ușoare,
la fel curajul se trezi în mine.”
― Dante Alighieri

“What about the motorcycle parts?"
"Those belong to my sort-of boyfriend. He's in Italy right now, visiting his family, and I like to have the mess around to remind me of him."
"Oh. So that's why Dante in Italian."
She blushed and looked away. "No. That's why the Italian boyfriend.”
― Kat Richardson, Greywalker

“Lo giorno se n'andava" - Day was departing..." Dante slows his deliberation as he prepares to enter the infernal realms for the first time: "... e io sol uno" - "and only I alone..." -how lonely he felt! He has to say it three times! io, sol, uno... "m'apparecchiava a sostener la guerra, sì del cammino e sì de la pietate.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“Dante is the first Christian poet, the first one whose whole system of thought is colored by a pure Christian theology. But the poem comes nearer to us than this. It is there real history of a brother man, of a tempted, purified, and at last triumphant human soul; it teaches the benign ministry of sorrow. His is the first keel that ever ventured into the silent sea of human consciousness to find a new world of poetry. He held heartbreak at bay for twenty years, and would not let himself die until he had done his task. Neither shall Longfellow. Neither shall I."
Lowell turned and started to descend.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“Milton was the gold standard of religious poets for English and American scholars. But Milton wrote of Hell and Heaven from above and below, respectively, not from the inside: safer advantages.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“No, never mind, I didn't think so. Mead, Dante's theme is man-not a man.' Lowell said finally with a mild patience that he reserved only for students. "The Italians forever twitch at Dante's sleeves trying to make him say he is of their politics and their way of thinking. Their way indeed! To confine it to Florence or Italy is to banish it from the sympathies of mankind. We read Paradise Lost as a poem but Dante's Comedy as a chronicle of our inner lives. Do you boys know of Isaiah 38:10”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“Un gran libro como la Divina Comedia no es el aislado o azaroso capricho de un individuo; muchos hombres y muchas generaciones tendieron hacia él. Investigar sus precursores no es incurrir en una miserable tarea de carácter jurídico o policial; es indagar los movimientos, los tanteos, las aventuras, las vislumbres y las premoniciones del espíritu humano.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Nove saggi danteschi

“[Dante Alighieri] is world-great not because he is world-wide but because he is world-deep.”
― Thomas Carlyle, Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History

“Macedonia has been receiving positive recommendations for entry into the European Union for 12 years now. It is three circles ahead of Dante's Inferno.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, Yet Another New Land