Love, that moves the sun and the other stars
— Paradiso
Dante Alighieri, widely known simply as Dante, was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His Divine Comedy is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language. The title was originally Comedìa, and Giovanni Boccaccio later added Divina.
At a time when Latin dominated scholarly and literary writing, Dante chose to write in the vernacular, his native Tuscan dialect. His use of the Florentine dialect in The New Life and the Divine Comedy helped establish standardized modern Italian. He is considered one of Italy's national poets, and his depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven influenced writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton and Alfred Tennyson. The Divine Comedy and its parts are his most quoted works in our library.
At a time when Latin dominated scholarly and literary writing, Dante chose to write in the vernacular, his native Tuscan dialect. His use of the Florentine dialect in The New Life and the Divine Comedy helped establish standardized modern Italian. He is considered one of Italy's national poets, and his depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven influenced writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton and Alfred Tennyson. The Divine Comedy and its parts are his most quoted works in our library.
Most quoted works
- The Divine Comedy 8
- Inferno 7
- Paradiso 7
- Purgatorio 6
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.
— The Divine Comedy
Open thy mind; take in what I explain and keep it there; because to understand is not to know, if thou dost not retain...
— Paradiso
Behave like men, and not like witless sheep...
— Paradiso
Oh human creatures, born to soar aloft, Why fall ye thus before a little wind?
— The Divine Comedy
…I am left with lessthan one drop of my blood that does not tremble.I recognize the the signs of the old flame.
— Purgatorio
There is no greater sorrow than to recall our time of joy in wretchedness.
— The Divine Comedy
And what will bow your shoulders downwill be the vicious and worthless company with whom you will fall into this abyss.
— Paradiso
If you, free as you are of every weighthad stayed below, then that would be as strangeas living flame on earth remaining still."And then she turned her gaze up toward the heavens.
— Paradiso
Come on, shake off the covers of this sloth, for sitting softly cushioned, or tucked in bed, is no way to win fame.
— The Divine Comedy
If the present world go astray, the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought.
— The Divine Comedy
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.
— The Divine Comedy