Quotes & Sayings About Dante
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Top Dante Quotes

Everyone looks like they've just stepped out of a Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting that he never got around to finishing because even he knew it was too over the top. It — Joe Queenan

Now you must cast aside your laziness,"
my master said, "for he who rests on down
or under covers cannot come to fame;
and he who spends his life without renown
leaves such a vestige of himself on earth
as smoke bequeaths to air or foam to water.
Therefore, get up; defeat your breathlessness
with spirit that can win all battles if
the body's heaviness does not deter it.
A longer ladder still is to be climbed;
it's not enough to have left them behind;
if you have understood, now profit from it. — Dante Alighieri

All things created have an order in themselves, and this begets the form that lets the universe resemble God. — Dante Alighieri

She got fired?" Confusion laced Gavin's voice. "When?"
"This morning," Dante muttered.
"Why?" Gavin asked. "What did she do?"
"Me," Dante said.
"Oh." A moment of silence passed before Gavin broke out into laughter. "Ah man, really? She lost her job for fucking around with you?"
"I don't see why that's so funny."
"Because," Gavin said, "you're the worst consolation prize ever."
Dante shot right back up, and Matty barely had enough time to move out of the way before the bottle of water hurled by him, hitting Gavin in the chest. — J.M. Darhower

O Virgins, sacrosanct, if I have ever, for your sake, suffered vigils,cold,, and hunger, great need makes me entreat my recompense. — Dante Alighieri

The years between Roger Bacon's birth, in 1220, and Uthred's death, in 1370, are considered the final flowering of the Middle Ages. They were followed by a longer, grimmer period in Europe, during which the machinery for rooting out heresy defeated enlightened discourse almost completely. The early condemnation of works by William Ockham, Johannes Eckehart, the spiritual Franciscans, and Dante signaled the start of a breakdown in the integrity of Western thought. During this Great Interruption, xenophobia replaced curiosity, interest in Islam and the classics withered, and Muslim thought was anathematized or ignored. Fifty years later, it was no longer wise to learn Arabic, Hebrew, or even Greek. — Michael Wolfe

Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people — Dante Alighieri

He felt as though his brain were on fire. She had come to him, what joy! And then, how she had looked at him! She seemed more beautiful than ever before. Beautiful with a beauty that combined all of the woman with all of the angel, a beauty that would have made Petrarch sing and Dante kneel. He felt as though he were swimming in the deep blue sky. At the same time he was horribly disconcerted, because there was dust on his boots. — Victor Hugo

Dante said, "I tried talking Nora into a ride, but she keeps blowing me off."
"That's because she has a hard-A boyfriend. He must have been
homeschooled, because he missed all those valuable lessons we learned in kindergarten, like sharing. He finds out you took Nora for a ride, he'll wrap this shiny new Porsche around the nearest tree. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Griff groaned and covered Dante's loose mouth with his own, driving his tongue in to steal the stars from his eyes, the fire from his mind. — Damon Suede

But I'm hungry. I bypass the line and smile to myself when the peeps behind me mumble complaints. Telling their families and friends about "this dick in the snack line" will be the highlight of their day. — Victoria Scott

In Scripture the visitation of an angel is always alarming; it has to begin by saying 'Fear not.' The Victorian angel looks as if it were going to say, 'There, there.' The literary symbols are more dangerous [than sculptures and pictures] because they are not so easily recognized as symbolical. Those of Dante are best. Before his angels we sink in awe. — Kathryn Lindskoog

In that book which is my memory,
On the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you,
Appear the words, 'Here begins a new life'. — Dante Alighieri

As fall the light autumnal leaves, one still the other following, till the bough strews all its honors on the earth below. — Dante Alighieri

He regarded us with dark, evaluating eyes. "This can't be good."
"I'll go first," Dabria began, sucking in a rattling breath.
"Not even close," I shot back. I faced Patch directly, cutting Dabria out of the conversation. "She kissed you! And Dante, who's been tailing you, by the way, caught it on camera. Imagine my surprise when that's what I got an eyeful of earlier tonight. Did you even think to tell me?"
"I told her I kissed you, and that you pushed me away," Dabria protested shrilly.
"What are you still doing here?" I exploded at Dabria. "This is between me and Patch. Leave already!"
"What are you doing here?" Patch echoed to Dabria, his tone sharpening.
"I - broke in," she sputtered. "I was scared. I couldn't sleep. I can't stop thinking about Hanoth and the other Nephilim."
"You have got to be kidding me," I said. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Was it a friend or foe that spread these lies; Nay, who but infants question in such wise, twas one of my most intimate enemies. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

You learn by trying, making mistakes, correcting and trying again and again until your reach the desired goal, which is rarely without effort, but is rather a reward for hard work. — Dante Alighieri

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 here
were every fruit and never-ending spring;
these streams
the nectar of which poets sing. — Dante Alighieri

Blue eyes glittered. A shock of golden hair - gone. The dust in the air swirled, coalesced into a thorn-twisted Shaman tattoo. — Lilith Saintcrow

Even as he who glories while he gains will, when the time has come to tally loss, lament with every thought and turn despondent, — Dante Alighieri

Christians, be steadier in what you do, not blown like feathers at the wind's discretion, nor think that every water cleanses you... — Dante Alighieri

I understood that to this mode of pain are doomed the sinners of the carnal kind, who o'er their reason let their impulse reign. — Dante Alighieri

your soul is sunken in that cowardice that bears down many men, turning their course and resolution by imagined perils, as his own shadow turns the frightened horse. — Dante Alighieri

A rapid bolt will rend the clouds apart,
and every single White be seared by wounds.
I tell you this. I want it all to hurt. — Dante Alighieri

Most of my reading is based on what I'm working on. I did a series of paintings based on the seven deadly sins, so I read Dante and then Milton's 'Paradise Lost.' That was a bit hard going. — Jamie Wyeth

O power of fantasy that steals our minds from things outside, to leave us unaware, although a thousand trumpets may blow loud
what stirs you if the senses show you nothing? Light stirs you, formed in Heaven, by itself, or by His will Who sends it down to us. — Dante Alighieri

I say that when she appeared, in whatever place, by the hope embodied in that marvelous greeting, for me no enemy remained, in fact I shone with a flame of charity that made me grant pardon to whoever had offended me: and if anyone had then asked me anything my reply would only have been: 'Love', with an aspect full of humility. — Dante Alighieri

Do not be afraid; our fate Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift. — Dante Alighieri

I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important." "You — Alexandre Dumas

DANTE: And what if you found out you were right? What if it meant that I could hurt you?
RENEE: I would not say that I'm not scared. Everyone has the ability to hurt. It's the choice that matters. — Yvonne Wood

Science is continually correcting what it has said. Fertile corrections ... science is a ladder ... poetry is a winged flight ... An artistic masterpiece exists for all time ... Dante does not efface Homer. — Victor Hugo

It's very hard to have lived through the Sixties and not be political. — Joe Dante

Open thy mind; take in what I explain and keep it there; because to understand is not to know, if thou dost not retain... — Dante Alighieri

Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante's scheme, Limbo is to Hell. — Irving Layton

Oh human creatures, born to soar aloft,
Why fall ye thus before a little wind? — Dante Alighieri

For the man on the street, science and math sound too and soulless. It is hard to appreciate their significance Most of us are just aware of Newton's apple trivia and Einstein's famous e mc2. Science, like philosophy, remains obscure and detached, playing role in our daily lives. There is a general perception that science is hard to grasp and has direct relevance to what we do. After all, how often do we discuss Dante or Descartes over dinner anyway? Some feel it to be too academic and leave it to the intellectuals or scientists to sort out while others feel that such topics are good only for academic debate. The great physicist, Rutherford, once quipped that, "i you can't explain a complex theory to a bartender, the theory not worth it" Well, it could be easier said than done (applications of tools — Sharad Nalawade

For where did Dante take the material of his hell but from our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell of it. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Man may behold what ugliness he likes if he is sure that he will not worship it; but there are some so weak that they will worship a thing only because it is ugly. These must be chained to the beautiful. It is not always wrong even to go, like Dante, to the brink of the lowest promontory and look down at hell. It is when you look up at hell that a serious miscalculation has probably been made. — G.K. Chesterton

Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

At this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe. — Dante Alighieri

Rejoice, Florence, seeing you are so great that over sea and land you flap your wings, and your name is widely known in Hell! — Dante Alighieri

For that you should read the original. In very great poetry the music often comes through even when one doesn't know language. I loved Dante passionately before I knew a word of Italian. — Donna Tartt

Do not desert me when I need you most. And if we can't go on together,
let's retrace our steps as quickly as we can. — Dante Alighieri

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. — Dante Alighieri

The Beatrice that obsessed Dante was a Florentine named Bice di Folco Portinari. Envision this moment (and, in all fairness, I am envisioning it the way Henry Holiday did in his exquisite nineteenth-century painting): Bice is walking beside the Arno River, dressed in white, the fabric clinging to her legs and outlining her slender thighs, and there is Dante. He meets her at the corner of one of the bridges that span
the river. His left hand, at first glimpse, is moving casually toward his hip; it is only on a more careful study that one realizes his hand is actually going up to his heart. Meanwhile, his right hand is resting on the bridge's waist-high stone balustrade, as if Bico's beauty is such that he needs to steady himself when he beholds her. — Chris Bohjalian

He leaned toward her father. " 'Tis true, I am a murderer, a liar, and a thief. 'Tis equally true that I will use whatever monstrous talents I possess to keep your daughter at my side. You can take Avalene to a convent at the ends of the earth and I will find her and steal her away again. I will lie to God, himself, to free her. I will protect her with my life, and I will murder anyone who threatens her. — Elizabeth Elliott

The weapons of divine justice are blunted by the confession and sorrow of the offender. — Dante Alighieri

He tried not to laugh, but he wasn't good at controlling all the laughter that lived inside of him. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

My mother used to always tell me that my father was a man who fought for the weak. He had courage and righteous heart. In the name of my father, I will kill Mundus! — Dante Alighieri

Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all the difference in art. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

If you follow your natural bent;you will definitely go to heaven — Dante Alighieri

how short a time the fire of love endures in woman
if frequent sight and touch do not rekindle it. — Dante Alighieri

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

She did not know what she had expected from her Dante, but she definitely hadn't received it. So with the wisdom that comes only from having experienced a broken heart, she resolved to let him go once and for all. — Sylvain Reynard

The broken branch hissed loudly, and then that
wind was converted into these words: Briefly will
you be answered.
When the fierce soul departs from the body from
which it has uprooted itself, Minos sends it to the
seventh mouth.
It falls into the wood, and no place is assigned to
it, but where chance hurls it, there it sprouts like a
grain of spelt.
It grows into a shoot, then a woody plant; the
Harpies, feeding on its leaves, give it pain and a
window for the pain.
Like the others, we will come for our remains, but
not so that any may put them on again, for it is not
just to have what one has taken from oneself.
Here we will drag them, and through the sad
wood our corpses will hang, each on the thornbrush
of the soul that harmed it. — Dante Alighieri

When the first movie to show the anger people have about the war is a grade Z zombie movie, that tells you all you need to know about how afraid of ruffling anyone's feathers people in the movie business are today. — Joe Dante

See your heart, and of this burning heart, your heart obediently eats. Dante — Isabelle Livingstone

The writer, having lost his way in a gloomy forest, and being hindered by certain wild beasts from ascending a mountain, is met by Virgil, who promises to show him the punishments of Hell, and afterwards of Purgatory; and that he shall then be conducted by Beatrice into Paradise. He follows the Roman Poet. — Dante Alighieri

They are THE OPPORTUNISTS, those souls who in life were neither for good nor evil but only for themselves. Mixed with them are those outcasts who took no sides in the Rebellion of the Angels. They are neither in Hell nor out of it. Eternally unclassified, they race round and round pursuing a wavering banner that runs forever before them through the dirty air; and as they run they are pursued by swarms of wasps and hornets, who sting them and produce a constant flow of blood and putrid matter which trickles down the bodies of the sinners and is feasted upon by loathsome worms and maggots who coat the ground. — Dante Alighieri

I myself do not believe that the Torah is any more or less the revealed Word of God than are Dante's Commedia, Shakespeare's King Lear, or Tolstoy's novels, all works of comparable literary sublimity — Harold Bloom

He believed that every individual was responsible for his conduct on earth, that there was a judge within. Could even a blazingly Christ inflict greater retribution? Could Dante's Charon in his rowboat on the river Acheron whip the miscreants into a deeper, more everlasting hell than man's unvarnished verdict of himself? — Irving Stone

Association is the delight of the heart, not less than of poetry. Alison observes that an autumn sunset, with its crimson clouds, glimmering trunks of trees, and wavering tints upon the grass, seems scarcely capable of embellishment. But if in this calm and beautiful glow the chime of a distant bell steal over the fields, the bosom heaves with the sensation that Dante so tenderly describes. — Robert Aris Willmott

Wouldn't have pegged you for a dancer," he spoke to my mind.
"Funny, I would have pegged you for a stalker," I shot back. — Becca Fitzpatrick

God is the love that moves the sun and stars. — Dante Alighieri

I will make them pay. Each and every one of them. I will get revenge on every last one of them and make them wish they were never born. And when I'm done, and I won't be done until they suffer, I will leave the job like you wanted and raise our child. I love you, Dante, and I will avenge your death. — Jaime Whitley

Whatsamatter?" Dante scraped a hand over his abs, his neck, the side of his face
collecting his jizz. He sucked his pleasure off his lower lip. "I gave myself a fuckin' necklace. — Damon Suede

Within her presence, I had once been used
to feeling - trembling - wonder, dissolution;
but that was long ago. Still, though my soul,
now she was veiled, could not see her directly,
by way of hidden force that she could move,
I felt the mighty power of old love. — Dante Alighieri

When you make a 3-D movie you actually have to plan the way the visuals look because there's a parallax issue, and there's an issue of editing; you can't edit very quickly in 3-D because the eye won't adjust fast enough for it. — Joe Dante

I was harder than Dante. I think I'd tried to hide that hardness from him because I'd wanted him to like me. But now he knew. That I was hard. And maybe that was okay. Maybe he could like the fact that I was hard just as I liked the fact that he wasn't hard. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

I disconnected as a sleepy Seth stepped out of the bedroom. "Who's Dante? Was that a collect call to the Inferno?"
"They won't accept the charges," I murmured. — Richelle Mead

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

I think 'Pan's Labyrinth' is genius. — Joe Dante

His gaze settles on the discarded book. He leans, reaching until his fingertips graze Dante's Inferno, still on its bed of folded sheets. "What have we here?" he asks.
"Required reading," I say.
"It's a shame they do that," he says, thumbing through the pages. "Requirement ruins even the best of books. — Victoria Schwab

For Russians, to whom Pushkin's poem 'Eugene Onegin' is sacred text, the ballet's story and personae are as familiar and filled with meaning as, for instance, 'Romeo' and 'Hamlet' are for us. Russians know whole stretches of it by heart, the way we know Shakespeare and Italians know Dante. — Robert Gottlieb

Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante's hell is the inscription: Leave behind all hope, you who enter here. — Jurgen Moltmann

She wanted to be someone's muse - to be worshipped and adored, body and soul. She wanted to play Beatrice to a dashing and noble Dante and to inhabit Paradise with him forever. And to live a life that would rival the beauty of Botticelli's illustrations. — Sylvain Reynard

If your world isn't right, the cause is in you. — Dante Alighieri

Now you're just being selfish," Dominic said to Jaime, shaking his head. "You have that body for the rest of your life. I only want it for one night."
Not in the mood to hear his packmate making moves - no matter how playful - on the female he intended to claim, Dante growled. "Dominic, no. Not to Jaime."
"But - "
"No."
Dominic sighed in resignation. "Okay, fine."
Noticing that Trey seemed to find the whole thing extremely amusing, Dante raised a brow at him. "It's funny now that he's not saying this shit to Taryn?"
Trey smiled. "Of course."
"I've always got some stored up for my gorgeous Alpha female," said Dominic with an impish grin.
Instantly Trey's smile fell from his face. "Dom, don't do it."
Dominic held his hands up, pleading innocence. "I was just going to ask her if she went to Boy Scouts ... because she has my heart all tied in knots."
Taryn groaned and chuckled at the same time. — Suzanne Wright

It was the hour of morning,
when the sun mounts with those stars
that shone with it when God's own love
first set in motion those fair things — Dante Alighieri

She threw her hands in the air. "Of course I was tense. You were kissing and touching me and I was turned on like crazy. Also, I haven't had a decent orgasm in like six freaking months. Are you reading my lips here? Six. Months. You'd be tense, too, wouldn't you?"
Dante gaped at her. Anna threw him a murderous glare.
"Are all men this dense or just you? Jesus, Dante, do I have to draw you a road map to my vagina, or are you grabbing a clue? — Jaci Burton

I squint my eyes and glare at him.
"I don't have a crush on Quinn anymore."
He raises a golden eyebrow.
"No?"
I shake my head. "No."
"Why is that?"
I stare at him long and hard, trying to decide what to say. Should I be downright, painfully honest? I've always found that the best way to be, so I nod.
"Two words."
He waits.
"Dante. Giliberti."
I hear him suck in his breath and I smile. Sometimes, honesty is refreshing and so very worth it.
"Me?" He sounds so surprised, as though he doesn't know that he is practically a living breathing Adonis. I nod.
"You."
He studies me again and I fight the need to fidget as I wait for his reaction.
After a minute of nerve-wracking silence, he finally answers.
"So, will you keep the bracelet?"
I nod.
"Can I kiss you again?"
I nod.
So he does. — Courtney Cole

I learned a new phrase today while you were away." She turned in his arms and then placed her hand on his chest. Her gaze lowered, suddenly shy. "Mi sei mancato molto." (I missed you so much)
Sometimes it was acceptable for comfort and need to collide. He leaned down and kissed her, a kiss to seal his promises, a kiss that meant they were going to miss their evening meal. — Elizabeth Elliott

If the halls of the Hermitage should suddenly go mad, if the paintings of all schools and masters should suddenly break loose from the nails, should fuse, intermingle, and fill the air of the rooms with futuristic howling and colours in violent agitation, the result then would be something like Dante's Comedy." Osip Mandelstam, "Converation with Dante — Osip Mandelstam

Mankind is at its best when it is most free. — Dante Alighieri

Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third. — T. S. Eliot

There is a reason Dante made betrayal the deepest level of Hell — Laura C. Schlessinger

I don't sleep with that many chicks, and if I did, so what? There's nuthin' wrong with sex. It's you religious types who have a problem with it, slut-shaming people who enjoy what your so-called God gave them. — Marita A. Hansen

A Sonnet is a
moment's
monument,
Memorial from the
Soul's eternity
To one dead
deathless hour. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

With Dante gone, time seemed to stand still around me; the mornings just as cloudy and dark as the evenings, as if the sun had never decided to rise. There was no wind, like the world was holding its breath along with me, waiting for him to return. — Yvonne Woon