Boccaccio Quotes & Sayings

No-thing less splendid than a golden sepulchre would have suited so noble a heart. — Giovanni Boccaccio

Although love dwells in gorgeous palaces, and sumptuous apartments, more willingly than in miserable and desolate cottages, it cannot be denied but that he sometimes causes his power to be felt in the gloomy recesses of forests, among the most bleak and rugged mountains, and in the dreary caves of a desert. — Giovanni Boccaccio

Human it is to have compassion on the unhappy — Giovanni Boccaccio

Laughter, on the other hand, " Petrarch went on, "is an explosion that tears us away from the world and throws us back into our own cold solitude. Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry. That's why I tell you yet again, and you want to keep in mind: Boccaccio doesn't understand love. Love can never be laughable. Love has nothing in common with laughter. — Milan Kundera

Fiammetta, whose wavy tresses fell in a flood of gold over her white and delicate shoulders — Giovanni Boccaccio

Why do I feel so exercised about what we think of the people of the Middle Ages? ... I guess it's because so many of their voices are ringing vibrantly in my ears - Chaucer's, Boccaccio's, Henry Knighton's, Thomas Walsingham's, Froissart's, Jean Creton's ... writers and contemporary historians of the period who seem to me just as individual, just as alive as we are today. We need to get to know these folk better in order to know who we are ourselves. — Terry Jones

In the affairs of this world, poverty alone is without envy. — Giovanni Boccaccio

People tend to believe the bad rather than the good. — Giovanni Boccaccio

Remember a feeling of excitement, of sudden inspiration, when I was visiting Giovanni Boccaccio's home in the walled village of Certaldo, outside of Florence. (Boccaccio was the medieval author of The Decameron.) It was as though I had met my muse! After this trip, I read The Decameron and began writing the Alchemy Series in earnest. — Mary Pope Osborne

Heaven would indeed be heaven if lovers were there permitted as much enjoyment as they had experienced on earth. — Giovanni Boccaccio

To have compassion for those who suffer is a human quality which everyone should possess, especially those who have required comfort themselves in the past and have managed to find it in others. — Giovanni Boccaccio

One demands a little originality in these days, even from murderers," said Lady Swaffham. "Like dramatists, you know
so much easier in Shakespeare's time, wasn't it? Always the same girl dressed up as a man, and even that borrowed from Boccaccio or Dante or somebody. I'm sure if I'd been a Shakespeare hero, the very minute I saw a slim-legged young page-boy I'd have said: 'Ods bodikins! There's that girl again! — Dorothy L. Sayers

Kissed mouth don't lose its fortune, on the contrary it renews itself just as the moon does. — Giovanni Boccaccio

In this world, you only get what you grab for. — Giovanni Boccaccio

it's that particular connection between melancholy and humor that Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl examined in Saturn and Melancholy (1964). Just as melancholy is sadness made light, so humor is comedy that has lost its physical weight (that dimension of human carnality that, however, makes Boccaccio and Rabelais great) and casts doubts on the self, the world, and the entire network of relations they form. — Italo Calvino

While farmers generally allow one rooster for ten hens, ten men are scarcely sufficient to service one woman. — Giovanni Boccaccio

Much is required of those who are happy, especially if they have needed comforting in the past, and have received it. — Giovanni Boccaccio

In my stunted career as a scholar, I'd read promissory notes, papal bulls and guidelines for Inquisitorial interrogation. Dante, too. Boccaccio ... But after 1400? Nihil. — Cathleen Schine

Nothing is so indecent that it cannot be said to another person if the proper words are used to convey it. — Giovanni Boccaccio

The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion might be adduced in behalf of a republic: It exists in spite of its ministers. — Heinrich Heine

My mind is wholly possessed by Love, who rules every part there of, in virtue of his all-embracing deity. — Giovanni Boccaccio

Because misogynists are the best of men." All the poets reacted to these words with hooting. Boccaccio was forced to raise his voice: "Please understand me. Misogynists don't despise women. Misogynists don't like femininity. Men have always been divided into two categories. Worshipers of women, otherwise known as poets, and misogynists, or, more accurately, gynophobes. Worshipers or poets revere traditional feminine values such as feelings, the home, motherhood, fertility, sacred flashes of hysteria, and the divine voice of nature within us, while in misogynists or gynophobes these values inspire a touch of terror. Worshipers revere women's femininity, while misogynists always prefer women to femininity. Don't forget: a woman can be happy only with a misogynist. No woman has ever been happy with any of you! — Milan Kundera

I am a free man. I do not need to copy Petrarca or Boccaccio. My own genius is enough. Let others worry themselves about style, and so cease to be themselves. Without a master, without a model, without a guide, I go to work and earn my living, my well-being and my fame. — Pietro Aretino

Alack!' rejoined the other, 'what is this thou sayest? Knowest thou not that we have promised our virginity to God?' 'Oh, as for that,' answered the first, 'how many things are promised Him all day long, whereof not one is fulfilled unto Him! An we have promised it Him, let Him find Himself another or others to perform it to Him.' 'Or if,' went on her fellow, 'we should prove with child, how would it go then?' Quoth the other, 'Thou beginnest to take thought unto ill ere it cometh; when that betideth, then will we look to it; there will be a thousand ways for us of doing so that it shall never be known, provided we ourselves tell it not. — Giovanni Boccaccio

The scholar, as wise as he was full of wrath, knowing that threats only serve as weapons to the person so threatened, kept all his resentment within his own breast [...] — Giovanni Boccaccio

It's better to repent what you enjoyed than to repent not having enjoyed anything. — Giovanni Boccaccio

I am one who could have forgotten the plague, listening to Boccaccio's stories; and I am not ashamed of it. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark. — Giovanni Boccaccio

Do as we say, and not as we do — Giovanni Boccaccio

So long she held on in this mourning manner, that, what by the
continuall watering of the Basile, and putrifaction of the head, so
buried in the pot of earth; it grew very flourishing, and most
odorifferous to such as scented it, that as no other Basile could
possibly yeeld so sweete a savour. — Giovanni Boccaccio

India was China's teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and the world's teacher in trignometry, quandratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess, as well as in philosophy, and that she inspired Boccaccio, Goethe, Herder, Schopenhauer, Emerson, and probably also old Aesop. — Lin Yutang