Petrarch Quotes

Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.

Love is the crowning grace of humanity.

Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.

And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.

Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.

Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds, and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.

Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.

Man has not a greater enemy than himself.

It is better to will the good than to know the truth.

Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.

All pleasure in the world is a passing dream.

Virtue is health, vice is sickness.

For though I am a body of this earth, my firm desire is born from the stars.

Books can warm the heart with friendly words and counsel, entering into a close relationship with us which is articulate and alive

Suspicion is the cancer of friendship.

If a hundred or a thousand people, all of the same age, of the same constitution and habits, were suddenly seized by the same illness, and one half of them were to place themselves under the care of doctors, such as they are in our time, whilst the other half entrusted themselves to Nature and to their own discretion, I have not the slightest doubt that there would be more cases of death amongst the former, and more cases of recovery among the latter.

I would have preferred to have been born in any other time than our own.

Books have led some to learning and others to madness.

To be able to say how much love, is love but little.

Man has no greater enemy than himself. I have acted contrary to my sentiments and inclination; throughout our whole lives we do what we never intended, and what we proposed to do, we leave undone.

Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage.

Great errors seldom originate but with men of great minds.

Ruthless striving, overcomes everything.

Continued work and application form my soul's nourishment. So soon as I commenced to rest and relax I should cease to live.

Where you are is of no moment, but only what you are doing there. It is not the place that ennobles you, but you the place, and this only by doing that which is great and noble.

How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance.

A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.

I saw the tracks of angels in the earth: the beauty of heaven walking by itself on the world.

It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.

The aged love what is practical while impetuous youth longs only for what is dazzling.

Nothing mortal is enduring, and there is nothing sweet which does not presently end in bitterness.

Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.

Often have I wondered with much curiosity as to our coming into this world and what will follow our departure.

Whyle I was abowte to chaunge myn olde lyff-- What sorowe I suffred, dyseese, angre and stryff, Cracchynge myn here, my chekys all totare, Wrythynge my fyngres for angwysshe and care, Watrynge the erthe with my byttre salte teres That the crye of my syghes ascended to Goddys eres, My knees with myn handys grasped togedyre soore, And yitt I stode the same man I was afore Tyl a depe profounde remembraunce att the laste Hadd all my wrecchednesse afore myn eyn caste

An equal doom clipp'd Time's blest wings of peace.

I looked back at the summit of the mountain, which seemed but a cubit high in comparison with the height of human contemplation, were in not too often merged in the corruptions of the earth.

Who naught suspects is easily deceived.

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.

Those spacious regions where our fancies roam, Pain'd by the past, expecting ills to come, In some dread moment, by the fates assign'd, Shall pass away, nor leave a rack behind; And Time's revolving wheels shall lose at last The speed that spins the future and the past: And, sovereign of an undisputed throne, Awful eternity shall reign alone.

To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost every one is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds.

What name to call thee by, O virgin fair, I know not, for thy looks are not of earth And more than mortal seems thy countenances

Often on earth the gentlest heart is fain To feed and banquet on another's woe.

Books come at my call and return when I desire them; they are never out of humor and they answer all my questions with readiness. Some present in review before me the events of past ages; others reveal to me the secrets of Nature. These teach me how to live, and those how to die; these dispel my melancholy by their mirth, and amuse me by their sallies of wit. Some there are who prepare my soul to suffer everything, to desire nothing, and to become thoroughly acquainted with itself. In a word, they open the door to all the arts and sciences.

Who over-refines his argument brings himself to grief

From thought to thought, from mountain peak to mountain. Love leads me on; for I can never still My trouble on the world's well beaten ways.

And tears are heard within the harp I touch.

For death betimes is comfort, not dismay, and who can rightly die needs no delay.

Death had his grudge against me, and he got up in the way, like an armed robber, with a pike in his hand.

How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!

For style beyond the genius never dares.