The Divine Comedy Quotes

All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain.

L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.

The devil is not as black as he is painted.

Through me you pass into the city of woe:Through me you pass into eternal pain:Through me among the people lost for aye.Justice the founder of my fabric moved:To rear me was the task of power divine,Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.Before me things create were none, save thingsEternal, and eternal I shall endure.All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?

Consider your origin. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.

Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice.

The man who lies asleep will never waken fame, and his desire and all his life drift past him like a dream, and the traces of his memory fade from time like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.

The day that man allows true love to appear, those things which are well made will fall into cofusion and will overturn everything we believe to be right and true.

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery

Lost are we, and are only so far punished,That without hope we live on in desire.

Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.

For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.

Nessun maggior doloreche ricordarsi del tempo felicenella miseria...

I did not die, and yet I lost life’s breath

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.

Segui il tuo corso et lascia dir les genti(Follow your road and let the people say)

In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn wood this was, which in my thought renews the fear!

Those ancients who in poetry presented the golden age, who sang its happy state,perhaps, in their Parnassus, dreamt this place. Here, mankind's root was innocent; and herewere every fruit and never-ending spring; these streams--the nectar of which poets sing.

I found myself within a forest dark,

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

There, pride, avarice, and envy are the tongues men know and heed, a Babel of depsair

As the geometer intently seeksto square the circle, but he cannot reach, through thought on thought, the principle he needs, so I searched that strange sight.

Oh blind, oh ignorant, self-seeking cupidity whcih spurs as so in the short mortal life and steeps as through all eternity.

The well heeded well heard.

I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightfoward pathway had been lost. Ah me! How hard a thing is to say, what was this forest savage, rough, and stern, which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is little more...

Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving, seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly, that, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me.

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

Through me the way into the suffering city,Through me the way into eternal pain,Through me the way that runs among the lost.

And as he, who with laboring breath has escaped from the deep to the shore, turns to the perilous waters and gazes.

This mountain’s of such sort that climbing it is hardest at the start; but as we rise, the slope grows less unkind.

Be as a tower, that, firmly set,Shakes not its top for any blast that blows!

They had their faces twisted toward their haunches and found it necessary to walk backward, because they could not see ahead of them. ...And since he wanted so to see ahead, he looks behind and walks a backward path.

When any of our faculties retainsa strong impression of delight or pain,the soul will wholly concentrate on that,neglecting any other power it has;and thus, when something seenor heard secures the soul in stringent grip,time moves and yet we do not notice it.

The only answer that I give to youis doing it," he said. "A just requestis to be met in silence, by the act.

And I was told about this torture, that it was the Hell of carnal sins when reasons give way to desire.

So bitter is it, death is little more;

Salvation must grow out of understanding, total understanding can follow only from total experience, and experience must be won by the laborious discipline of shaping one’s absolute attention.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,

Its reward is in the doing,And the rapture of pursuingIs the prize

That precious fruit which all men eagerly go searching for on many different boughs will give,today, peace to your hungry soul.

The Commedia , it must be remembered, is a vision of the progress of man’s soul toward perfection.

There is no greater sorrow than to recall our time of joy in wretchedness.

I by not doing, not by doing, lost

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say

We climbed, he first and I behind, until though a small round opening ahead of us, I saw the lovely things the heavens hold, and we came out to see once more the stars.

So, now, with me. That brute which knows no peace came ever nearer me and, step by step, drove me back down to where the sun is mute.

Three dispositions adverse to Heaven's still, - Incontinence, malice, and mad brutishness.

Its very memory gives a shape to fear.   Death could scarce be more bitter than that place!