Dante Alighieri Quotations

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

There are souls beneath that water. Fixed in slimethey speak their piece, end it, and start again:'Sullen were we in the air made sweet by the Sun;in the glory of his shining our hearts poureda bitter smoke. Sullen were we begun;sullen we lie forever in this ditch.'This litany they gargle in their throatsas if they sand, but lacked the words and pitch.

These dwell among the blackest souls,loaded down deep by sins of differing types.If you sink far enough,you'll see them all.

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.

I saw a point that shone with light so keen, the eye that sees it cannot bear its blazing; the star that is for us the smallest one would seem a moon if placed beside this point.

He loves but little who can say and count in words, how much he loves.

In that part of the book of my memory before the which is little that can be read, there is a rubric, saying, Incipit Vita Nova. Under such rubric I find written many things; and among them the words which I purpose to copy into this little book; if not all of them, at the least their substance.

As little flowers, which the chill of night has bent and huddled, when the white sun strikes, grow straight and open fully on their stems, so did I, too, with my exhausted force.

…all things created have an order in themselves, and this begets the form that lets the universe resemble God.

Fame is not won on downy plumes nor under canopies; the man who consumes his days without obtaining it leaves such mark of himself on earth as smoke in air or foam on water.