The Dante Club Quotes

“Shakespeare brings us to know ourselves. Dante, with his dissection of all others, bids us to know one another.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“He was outwardly calm but inwardly bleeding to death.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“Though a woman tempted man to eat, my dear Longfellow," said Holmes, "you never hear of Eve having to do with his drinking, for he took to that of his own notion.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“I prefer the society of one faithful person to an association of rapid talkers, who more than anything else seek admiration from one another.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“There was still the temptation to believe the world was a mere trap for human sin. But sin, the way he saw it, was only the failure of an imperfectly made being to keep a perfect law.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“ 'Yes, we rather condemn people for eternity without the courtesy of informing them.' ”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“Dante's Hell is part of our world as much as part of the underworld, and shouldn't be avoided, Lowell said, but rather confronted. We sound the depths of Hell very often in this life.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“Why did nature not ask my advice about my features?”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“What begins as taste becomes religion”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“These people build as if they were immortal and eat as if they were to die instantly.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“Remember that only when past genius is transmitted into a present power shall we meet the first truly american poet. And somewhere, born to the streets rather than the athenaeum, we will come upon the first true reader. The spirit of the american is suspected to be timid, imitative, tame -- the scholar decent, indolent, complaisant. The mind of our country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. Without action, the scholar is not yet man. Ideas must work through the bones and arms of good men or they are no better than dreams.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“ 'Till America has learned to love literature not as an amusement, not as a mere doggerel to memorize in a college room, but for its humanizing and ennobling energy, my dear reverend president, she will not have succeeded in that high sense which alone makes a nation out of a people. That which raises it from a dead name to a living power.' ”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“On the trees were no longer only leaves but brown fruits, on the bushes no longer blossoms but clusters of red berries. And the wind had a rough manliness in its voice - the tone not of a lover but of a husband.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“Sepa que cuando soy amigo de un hombre lo soy para siempre, y es muy difícil hacerme volver atrás. Y aunque un hombre pueda gozar siendo mi enemigo, no puede convertirme a mí en el suyo mientras yo no quiera. Buenas tardes.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“Survival here means simply an incomplete death, not a partial life -- to be trapped in a gap between the living and the dead. If I had a thousand tongues, I would not try to describe the agony!”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“You have never fought for anything in your life. You write poems and articles about slavery and the murder of Indians and hope something will change. You fight what does not come near your door, professors. You've inherited everything in your lives and do not know what it is to cry for your bread! Well, with what other expectations did I come to this country? What should I complain of? The greatest bard had no home but exile. One day to come, perhaps, I shall walk on my own shores again, one more with true friends, before I leave this earth.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“The force of Dante's poetry resonated most in those who did not confess the Catholic faith, for believers would inevitably have quibbles with Dante's theology. But for those most distant theologically, Dante's faith was so perfect, so unyielding, that a reader found himself compelled by the poetry to take it all to heart.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“ 'Pity without rigor would be cowardly egotism, mere sentimentality.' ”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“ 'Do not ask what brings Dante to man but what brings man to Dante-to personally enter his sphere, though it is forever severe and unforgiving.' ”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“It is Dante who decides who should be punished and where they go, what torments they suffer. It is the poet who takes those measures, yet by making himself the journeyer, he tries to make us forget: We think he too is another innocent witness to god's work.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“Longfellow smiled. "A great part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, my dear Lowell, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“When you ask one friend to dine, give him your best wine. When you ask two, the second best will do.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“Till America has learned to love literature not as an amusement, not as mere doggerel to memorize in a college room, but for its humanizing and ennobling energy, my dear reverend president, she will not have succeeded in that high sense which alone makes a nation out of a people. That which raises it from a dead name to a living power.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“A man was leaning idly against an elm. ... The man, who towered over the poet even at his slanting angle, too old for a student and too worn for a faculty member, stared at him with the familiar, insatiable gleam of the literary admirer.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“Now, on his way to another lecture, the very thought of entering a room full of students, who still thought it was possible to learn all about something, made him yawn.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“believes the world is against him. Nothing”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“It is my happiest thought that with all the drawbacks of my temperament, I have yet to lose a real friend.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“His life was a suicide. He gave up his soul for fear, little by little, until there was nowhere left in the universe but hell.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“Longfellow, as he climbed up, hoped he would not be asked to speak in front of all the guests during the banquet, but if he were, he would thank his friends for bringing him along.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club

“The mind of our country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club