Quotes by Dante Alighieri

He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it.

I, answering in the end, began: Alas,how many yearning thoughts, what great desire,have lead them through such sorrow to their fate?

This is Nimrod, because of whose vile plan the world no longer speaks a single tongue.

For certain he hath seen all perfectnessFor certain he hath seen all perfectness. Who among other ladies hath seen mine: They that go with her humbly should combine To thank their God for such peculiar grace. So perfect is the beauty of her face That it begets in no wise any sign Of envy, but draws round her a clear line Of love, and blessed faith, and gentleness. Merely the sight of her inakes all things bow: Not she herself alone is holier Than all: but hers, through her, are raised above. From all her acts such lovely graces flow That truly one may never think of her Without a passion of exceeding love.

If you, free as you are of every weighthad stayed below, then that would be as strangeas living flame on earth remaining still.And then she turned her gaze up toward the heavens.

Fates arrow, when expected, travels slow.

Put off this sloth, the master said, for shame!Sitting on feather-pillows, lying reclined Beneath the blanket is no way to fame -Fame, without which mans life wastes out of mind, Leaving on earth no more memorialThan foam in water or smoke upon the wind

Come on, shake off the covers of this sloth, for sitting softly cushioned, or tucked in bed, is no way to win fame.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

The experience of this sweet life.

High justice would in no way be debased if ardent love should cancel instantly the debts these penitents must satisfy.

...Because the sacred fire that lights all nature liveliest of all in its own image glows. All these prerogatives the human creature possesses, and if one of them should fail, he must diminish from his noble stature. Sin only can disenfranchise him, and veil his likeness to the Highest Good; whereby the light in him is lessened and grows pale. Neer can he win back dignities so high till the void made by guilt be all filled in with just amends paid for by illicit joy. Now, when your nature as a whole did sin in its first root, it lost these great awards, and lost the Eden of its origin; nor might they be recovered afterwards by any means, as if thou search thoult see, except by crossing one of these two fords; either must God, of his sole courtesy, remit, or man must pay with all thats his, the debt of sin in its entirety. Within the Eternal Counsels deep abyss rivet thine eye, and with a heed as good as thou canst give me, do thou follow this. Man from his finite assets never could make satisfaction; neer could he abase him so low, obey thereafter all he would, as hed by disobedience sought to raise him; and for this cause man might not pay his due himself, nor from the debtors roll erase him. Needs then must God, by his own ways, renew mans proper life, and reinstate him so; his ways I say - by one, or both of two. And since the doers actions ever show more gracious as the style of them makes plain the goodness of the heart from which they flow, that most high Goodness which is God was fain - even God, whose impress Heaven and earth display - by all His ways to lift you up again; nor, between final night and primal day, was eer proceeding so majestical and high, nor shall not be, by either way; for Gods self-giving, which made possible that man should raise himself, showed more largesse than if by naked power Hed cancelled all; and every other means would have been less than justice, if it had not pleased Gods Son to be humiliate in fleshliness.

The path to paradise begins in hell.

Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground

That infinite and indescribable good which is there above races as swiftly to love as a ray of light to a bright body.It gives of itself according to the ardor it finds, so that as charity spreads farther the eternal good increases upon it,and the more souls there are who love, up there, the more there are to love well, and the more love they reflect to each other, as in a mirror.

The mind which is created quick to love, is responsive to everything that is pleasing, soon as by pleasure it is awakened into activity. Your apprehensive faculty draws an impression from a real object, and unfolds it within you, so that it makes the mind turn thereto. And if, being turned, it inclines towards it, that inclination is love; that is nature, which through pleasure is bound anew within you.

The Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

If the present world go astray, the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought.

There is no greater sorrowthan thinking back upon a happy timein misery--

All hope abandon, ye who enter here.