Dante S Inferno Quotes & Sayings

For those who are gifted for the soteriological pathway of marriage, it, like every such pathway, naturally offers not only trouble, work, and suffering but the deepest kind of existential satisfaction. Dante did not get to Paradiso without going through the Inferno. And so also there seldom exist "happy marriages". — Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig

If you weep not now, when will you ever weep?

E se non piangi, de che pianger suoli?

--Inferno, c. 33 l. 42 — Dante Alighieri

In every journey comes a moment ... one like no other. And in that moment, you must decide between who you are ... and who you want to be. — J.C. Marino

For pride and avarice and envy are the three fierce sparks that set all hearts ablaze. — Dante Alighieri

Kelley. Your name is Kelley, isn't it?" He didn't wait for her confirmation. "Yes. Well. Tell me ... that bit just now ... was that from Dante's Inferno?"
Uh ... no," Kelley stammered. Her face felt hot.
Really?"
I'm in for it.
Are you sure?" he continued. "Because it most certainly wasn't from this play. And it bloody well sounded like hell. — Lesley Livingston

That which Dante saw written on the door of the inferno must be written in a different sense also at the entrance to philosophy: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Those who look for true philosophy must be bereft of all hope, all desire, all longing. They must not wish for anything, not know anything, must feel completely bare and impoverished. — Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

Dear Reader, Dante Alighieri said, in his Inferno: "Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift." Dante lied. Our fate must be worked for. It must be paid for. With tears. With blood. With everything we have. And it is not until the end, the very end, that we will know if it was worth it. — Courtney Cole

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 things
Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here. — Dante Alighieri

And believe me, the Catholic Church has much to thank Dante for. His Inferno terrified the faithful for centuries, and no doubt tripled church attendance among the fearful. — Dan Brown

There is no greater sorrow
than thinking back upon a happy time
in misery
— Dante Alighieri

Thy soul is by vile fear assailed — Dante Alighieri

Through me is the way to the city of woe.
Through me is the way to sorrow eternal.
Through me is the way to the lost below. Justice moved my architect supernal.
I was constructed by divine power,
supreme wisdom, and love primordial.
Before me no created things were.
Save those eternal, and eternal I abide.
Abandon all hope, you who enter. — Dante Alighieri

Life is a " vale of tears" a period of trial and suffering, an unpleasant but necessary preparation for the afterlife where alone man could expect to enjoy happiness - Archibald T. MacAllister (The Inferno; Dante Alighieri translated by John Ciardi) — Dante Alighieri

It's not by accident that people talk of a state of confusion as not being able to see the wood for the trees, or of being out of the woods when some crisis is surmopunted. It is a place of loss, confusion, terror and anger, a place where you can, like Dante, find yourself going down into Hell. But if it's any comfort, the dark wood isn't just that. It's also a place of opportunity and adventure. It is the place in which fortunes can be reversed, hearts mended, hopes reborn. — Amanda Craig

In a way, that's also a recognition that Dante needs Virgil and that the Inferno needs the Aeneid and that the epic needs a model and that for Dante to write this great poem he needs someone to come before him and he turns to Virgil's text, especially book six where Aeneas goes down into the underworld. And for me, that's a model of the poet's relationship to previous poetry, to another poetry as calling out for guidance. — Edward Hirsch

They yearn for what they fear for. — Dante Alighieri

Although I studied Dante's Inferno as a student, it wasn't until recently, while researching in Florence, that I came to appreciate the enduring influence of Dante's work on the modern world, — Dan Brown

There is a particular circle of hell not mentioned in Dante's famous book. It is called comportment, and it exists in schools for young ladies across the empire. I do not know how it feels to be thrown into a lake of fire. I am sure it isn't pleasant. But I can say with all certainty that walking the length of a ballroom with a book upon one's head and a backboard strapped to one's back while imprisoned in a tight corset, layers of petticoats, and shoes that pinch is a form of torture even Mr. Alighieri would find too hideous to document in his Inferno. — Libba Bray

She had chosen Dante because she found the rhyme scheme pleasingly jaunty, but she realized too late that the Inferno's tale of sinners being cruelly punished in the afterlife was much too bloody and disturbing to be suitable for young minds. Penelope could tell this by the way the children hung on her every word and demanded "More, more!" each time she reached the end of a canto and tried to stop. — Maryrose Wood

I'm Christian, but if God is truly a God of love, then why would he have a private torture chamber where he put people that he was supposed to love and forgive to be punished forever? If you actually read the Bible, the idea of hell like in the movies and most books was invented by a writer. Dante's Inferno was ripped off by the Church to give people something to be afraid of, to literally scare people into being Christian. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Inferno is the underworld as described in Dante Alighieri's epic poem The Divine Comedy, which portrays hell as an elaborately structured realm populated by entities known as "shades" - bodiless souls trapped between life and death. — Dan Brown

A full and powerful soul not only copes with painful even terrible losses, deprivations, robberies, insults; it emerges from such hells with a greater fullness and powerfulness, and most essential of all with a new increase in the bliss-Fulness of love.

I believe that he who has divined something of the most basic conditions for his growth in love will understand what Dante meant when he wrote over the gate of his inferno: 'I, too, was created by eternal love. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Inferno: Canto XIII
Not yet had Nessus reached the other side,
When we had put ourselves within a wood,
That was not marked by any path whatever.
Not foliage green, but of a dusky colour,
Not branches smooth, but gnarled and intertangled,
Not apple-trees were there, but thorns with poison.
Such tangled thickets have not, nor so dense,
Those savage wild beasts, that in hatred hold
'Twixt Cecina and Corneto the tilled places.
There do the hideous Harpies make their nests,
Who chased the Trojans from the Strophades,
With sad announcement of impending doom;
Broad wings have they, and necks and faces human,
And feet with claws, and their great bellies fledged;
They make laments upon the wondrous trees. — Dante Alighieri

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

You did thirst for blood, and with blood I fill you — Dante Alighieri

My hell is going to be the stairmaster wing of Dante's inferno, where they're gonna tape my feet to the pedals and the only music I get is Michael Bolton karaoke style. — Janeane Garofalo

I'm a Christian, but if God is truly a God of love, then why would he have a private torture chamber where he put people that he was suppose to love and forgive to punish forever? if you actually read the Bible, the idea of hell like in the movies and most books was invented by a writer. Dante's inferno was ripped off by the Church to give people something to ba afraid of ... — Laurell K. Hamilton

Before me things created were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I endure. All hope abandon, ye who enter here. - Dante, Inferno — Cassandra Clare

There are seven deadly sins, not just one, and Christianity's understanding of marriage and chastity is intimately bound to its views on gluttony, avarice and pride. (Recall that in the Inferno, Dante consigns gluttons, misers, and spendthrifts to lower circles of hell than adulterers and fornicators.) — Ross Douthat

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. — Dante Alighieri

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

Love insists the loved loves back — Dante Alighieri

The well heeded well heard. — Dante Alighieri

Muse

When at night I wait for her to come,
Life, it seems, hangs by a single strand.
What are glory, youth, freedom, in comparison
with the dear welcome guest, a flute in hand?

She enters now. Pushing her veil aside,
she stares through me with her attentiveness.
I question her: 'And were you Dante's guide,
dictating the Inferno?' She answers: 'Yes. — Anna Akhmatova

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

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

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

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

Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage. Ye who enter here leave all hope behind. — Emma Goldman

Thirteen years ago, I found myself professionally in the same "dark wood" described by Dante in the introduction to The Inferno. For the — Bloomberg Press

Bourbon, Kentucky bourbon especially, is like Dante's Inferno in a glass, fire walks down your throat, lungs, and heart and everything in between with an unpleasant after-taste. We got along just fine. — Bruce Crown

We are burning like a chicken wing left on the grill of an outdoor barbecue
we are unwanted and burning we are burning and unwanted
we are
an unwanted
burning
as we sizzle and fry
to the bone
the coals of Dante's 'Inferno' spit and sputter beneath
us
and
above the sky is an open hand
and
the words of wise men are useless
it's not a nice world, a nice world it's
not ... — Charles Bukowski

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

I felt what I was trying to do was make people realize that comics could be deep. I stopped myself in the middle of saying that because the Bazooka Joe thing I do with Dante's Inferno, that was just a goof. I wasn't trying to make people look at Bazooka Joe more seriously. But in my mind it's always been important. — Robert Sikoryak

Why do we allow people to abuse their children? Why don't we defend the sick and the weak? Why do we let soldiers round up our neighbors and make them wear a star on their clothing and cram them into boxcars? It isn't God who's evil-it's us. — Sylvain Reynard

I love to doubt as well as know."
~ Dante's Inferno, Canto XI, 93: "non men che saver, dubbiar m'aggrata. — Dante Alighieri

It may be somewhat paradoxical to refer to shame as a 'feeling,' for while shame is initially painful, constant shaming leads to a deadening of feeling. Shame, like cold, is, in essence, the absence of warmth. And when it reaches overwhelming intensity, shame is experienced, like cold, as a feeling of numbness and deadness. [In Dante's Inferno] the lowest circle of hell was a region not of flames, but of ice---absolute coldness. — James Gilligan

One day in Auschwitz, the writer Primo Levi recited a canto of Dante's Inferno to a companion, and the poem about hell reached out from six hundred years before to roll back Levi's despair and his dehumanization. It was the canto about Ulysses, and though it ends tragically, it contains the lines You were not made to live like animals But to pursue virtue and know the world which he recited and translated to the man walking with him. — Rebecca Solnit

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. — Dante Alighieri

And now I fell as bodies fall,for dead. — Dante Alighieri

Only seconds slip by without me scrambling for the aid of someone better, more knowledgeable, to walk beside. Writers are good for that. They like nothing more than to tell you what they know.
Dorothy Sayers, with all her essays and treatises, was good for that. Are women human? What constitutes the mind of the Maker? How did Dante survive the Inferno? Ask Dorothy; she'll tell you and gladly. — Chila Woychik

I felt for the tormented whirlwinds
Damned for their carnal sins
Committed when they let their passions rule their reason. — Dante Alighieri

They left a path of pain for whoever ventured near, and Jack and Lexi weren't immune to the catastrophes they created. There was a reason the sin of lust was whirled around for eternity in Dante's Inferno. No matter where they went, they couldn't help but ceaselessly be in a whirlwind always crossing that fine line between love and lust. — K.A. Linde

A great model for this is the way that Dante calls on Virgil at the beginning of The Inferno, The Divine Comedy, to help guide him through the underworld. — Edward Hirsch

There are souls beneath that water. Fixed in slime
they 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 poured
a bitter smoke. Sullen were we begun;
sullen we lie forever in this ditch.'
This litany they gargle in their throats
as if they sand, but lacked the words and pitch. — Dante Alighieri

Google is so strange. It promises everything, but everything isn't there. You type in the words for what you need, and what you need becomes superfluous in an instant, shadowed instantaneously by the things you really need, and none of them answerable by Google....Sure, there's a certain charm to being able to look up and watch Eartha Kitt singing Old Fashioned Millionaire in 1957 at three in the morning or Hayley Mills singing a song about femininity from an old Disney film. But the charm is a kind of deception about a whole new way of feeling lonely, a semblance of plenitude but really a new level of Dante's inferno, a zombie-filled cemetery of spurious clues, beauty, pathos, pain, the faces of puppies, women and men from all over the world tied up and wanked over in site after site, a great sea of hidden shallows. More and more, the pressing human dilemma: how to walk a clean path between obscenities. — Ali Smith

The ecclesiastical description of Hell is that of a horrible place of fire and torment; in Dante's Inferno, and in northern climes, it was thought to be an icy cold region, a giant refrigerator. — Anton Szandor LaVey

Tis Dante I prefer. In his Inferno he suggests the one true path from Hell lies at its very heart ...
... and that in order to escape, we must instead go further IN. — Alan Moore

As flowerlets drooped and puckered in the night turn up to the returning sun and spread their petals wide on his new warmth and light-just so my wilted spirits rose again and such a heat of zeal surged through my veins that I was born anew. — Dante Alighieri