Dante Alighieri Quotes (1265-1321)

“Incorrigible humanity, therefore, led astray by the giant Nimrod, presumed in its heart to outdo in skill not only nature but the source of its own nature, who is God; and began to build a tower in Sennaar, which afterwards was called Babel (that is, 'confusion'). By this means human beings hoped to climb up to heaven, intending in their foolishness not to equal but to excel their creator.”

“Thou sayest, 'Well discern I what I hear;     But it is hidden from me why God willed     For our redemption only this one mode.' Buried remaineth, brother, this decree     Unto the eyes of every one whose nature     Is in the flame of love not yet adult. Verily, inasmuch as at this mark     One gazes long and little is discerned,     Wherefore this mode was worthiest will I say. Goodness Divine, which from itself doth spurn     All envy, burning in itself so sparkles     That the eternal beauties it unfolds. Whate'er from this immediately distils     Has afterwards no end, for ne'er removed     Is its impression when it sets its seal. Whate'er from this immediately rains down     Is wholly free, because it is not subject     Unto the influences of novel things.”

“There is in hell a place stone-built throughout, Called Malebolge, of an iron hue, Like to the wall that circles it about.”

“As, pricked out with less and greater lights, between the poles of the universe, the Milky Way so gleameth white as to set very sages questioning.”

“St. Thomas Aquinas narrates the life of St. Francis d'Assisi. O MORTAL cares insensate, what small worth, In sooth, doth all those syllogisms fill, Which make you stoop your pinions to the earth!”

“Their crime, who not with us proceed, was that, For which, as he did triumph, Caesar heard The snout of ‘queen’, to taunt him. Hence their cry Of ‘Sodom,’ as they parted, to rebuke Themselves, and aid the burning by their shame.”

“Behind them was the wood Full of black female mastiffs, gaunt and fleet, As greyhounds that have newly slipp’d the leash. On him, who squatted down, they stuck their fangs, And having rent him piecemeal bore away The tortur’d limbs.”

“As seems the Carisenda, to behold   Beneath the leaning side, when goes a cloud   Above it so that opposite it hangs;Such did Antaeus seem to me, who stood   Watching to see him stoop, and then it was   I could have wished to go some other way.”

“O how far remov'd, Predestination! is thy foot from such As see not the First Cause entire: and ye, O mortal men! be wary how ye judge: For we, who see the Maker, know not yet The number of the chosen; and esteem Such scantiness of knowledge our delight: For all our good is, in that primal good, Concentrate; and God's will and ours are one.”

“Christians, be ye more serious in your movements; Be ye not like a feather at each wind, And think not every water washes you. Ye have the Old and the New Testament, And the Pastor of the Church who guideth you Let this suffice you unto your salvation. If evil appetite cry aught else to you, Be ye as men, and not as silly sheep, So that the Jew among you may not mock you.”

“As many as were the types of work involved in the enterprise, so many were the languages by which the human race was fragmented; and the more skill required for the type of work, the more rudimentary and barbaric the language they now spoke. But the holy tongue remained to those who had neither joined in the project nor praised it, but instead, thoroughly disdaining it, had made fun of the builders' stupidity.”

“If thou observe the tokens, which this man Trac’d by the finger of the angel bears, ’Tis plain that in the kingdom of the just He needs must share. But sithence she, whose wheel Spins day and night, for him not yet had drawn That yarn, which, on the fatal distaff pil’d, Clotho apportions to each wight that breathes, His soul, that sister is to mine and thine, Not of herself could mount, for not like ours Her ken.”

“For in every action what is primarily intended by the doer, whether he acts from natural necessity or out of free will, it is the disclosure of his own image. Hence it comes about that every doer, in so far as he does, takes delight in doing; since everything that is desires its own being, and since in action the being of the doer is somehow intensified, delight necessarily follows... Thus, nothing acts unless [by acting] it makes patent its latent self.”

“Incorrigible humanity, therefore, led astray by the giant Nimrod, presumed in its heart to outdo in skill not only nature but the source of its own nature, who is God; and began to build a tower in Sennaar, which afterwards was called Babel (that is, 'confusion'). By this means human beings hoped to climb up to heaven, intending in their foolishness not to equal but to excel their creator. ... Only among those who were engaged in a particular activity did their language remain unchanged; so, for in­stance, there was one for all the architects, one for all the carriers of stones, one for all the stone-breakers, and so on for all the different opera­tions. As many as were the types of work involved in the enterprise, so many were the languages by which the human race was fragmented; and the more skill required for the type of work, the more rudimentary and barbaric the language they now spoke. But the holy tongue remained to those who had neither joined in the project nor praised it, but instead, thoroughly disdaining it, had made fun of the builders' stupidity.”

“Above in beauteous Italy lies a lake   At the Alp’s foot that shuts in Germany   Over Tyrol, and has the name Benaco.By a thousand springs, I think, and more, is bathed,   ’Twixt Garda and Val Camonica, Pennino,   With water that grows stagnant in that lake.Midway a place is where the Trentine Pastor,   And he of Brescia, and the Veronese   Might give his blessing, if he passed that way.Sitteth Peschiera, fortress fair and strong,   To front the Brescians and the Bergamasks,   Where round about the bank descendeth lowest.There of necessity must fall whatever   In bosom of Benaco cannot stay,   And grows a river down through verdant pastures.Soon as the water doth begin to run,   No more Benaco is it called, but Mincio,   Far as Governo, where it falls in Po.Not far it runs before it finds a plain   In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy,   And oft ’tis wont in summer to be sickly.Passing that way the virgin pitiless   Land in the middle of the fen descried,   Untilled and naked of inhabitants;There to escape all human intercourse,   She with her servants stayed, her arts to practise   And lived, and left her empty body there.The men, thereafter, who were scattered round,   Collected in that place, which was made strong   By the lagoon it had on every side;They built their city over those dead bones,   And, after her who first the place selected,   Mantua named it, without other omen.Its people once within more crowded were,   Ere the stupidity of Casalodi   From Pinamonte had received deceit.Therefore I caution thee, if e’er thou hearest   Originate my city otherwise,   No falsehood may the verity defraud.””

“I wanted my illustrations for the Dante to be like the faint markings of moisture in a divine cheese. This explains their variegated aspect of butterflies' wings. Mysticism is cheese; Christ is cheese, better still, mountains of cheese!”

“Gilson criticizes attempts to trace Dante's position back to Thomism or Averroism. For St. Thomas, every hierarchy of dignity is at the same time a hierarchy of jurisdiction, while for Dante—except for God—a hierarchy of dignity is never the foundation of a hierarchy of jurisdiction, and this corresponds to Dante's specific philosophical problem, which is not so much to define the essence of philosophy as to determine functions and jurisdictions. The principle governing this determination is absolutely irreconcilable with Thomism. St. Thomas knows only one ultimate end: eternal bliss, which can only be attained through the Church; moreover, the spirituality of the ultimate end implies that between temporal and spiritual power there is a hierarchical subordination of the means to the end. For Dante, on the other hand, man can obtain, through the exercise of political virtues, a human happiness completely distinct from heavenly bliss, even if the latter represents a higher end. The thesis of the “duo ultima” legitimizes the complete distinction between the political order and the religious order, which is equally universal to that of the Church, but autonomous and pursuing an end of earthly happiness.”

“For us Anishinaabe, Biskaabiiyang is a specific term that means “returning to the woods,” because we’re woodland peoples. For example, I grew up growing my “three sisters”—that is, corn, beans, and squash—along the edge of the forest, using what people now call sylvan culture or permaculture. It’s curious how this counters the perspective of classical authors like Dante in early modern Europe or, later, Edmund Spenser, an important Renaissance poet, who view the woods as this terrifying presence. Why is this decolonizing? Because through boarding schools and many other colonial experiences, that fear of the woods creeps in.”

“Dante as a poet performs miracles in some of the openings of his lyrics or some of his verses in the Commedia. In an age of convention and formalism he went to Virgil to school; in an age when nothing gave reason to hope for the appearance of a masterpiece of form and structure, he produced such a masterpiece. His creative work is immensely superior in merit to his theorizing, but even these show how, in spite of the limitations of contemporary philosophy and rhetoric he was able to slip through the meshes of the network which encircled him, and to bring the vernacular poetry of Italy, when it was still in its infancy, to heights of perfection and finish that have seldom been equalled and never surpassed.”

“I would like to add my voice to those who consider Dante Alighieri an artist of the greatest universal esteem, who through his immortal works still has much to say and offer to those who desire to travel the way to true knowledge, to the authentic discovery of self, of the world, of life's profound and transcendent meaning. ... The Comedy can be read as a great itinerary, rather as a true pilgrimage, both personal and interior, as well as communal, ecclesial, social and historic. ... Dante is...a prophet of hope, a herald of humanity's possible redemption and liberation, of profound change in every man and woman, of all of humanity.”

“Dante was the first to sing of heaven and of hell, not as the dreams of mythological fiction, but as the objects of a real faith. He was the first who lanched from this promontory on which we stand, into the vast immensity of the universe, traversed the abyss amidst demons and infernal tortures, and mounting afterwards through angelic hosts and undiscovered worlds, gazed with stedfast eye upon the glories of the Highest... Dante was the Columbus who discovered this new world of poesy... Dante probably surpassed even Homer himself.”

“Dante's corpus as a whole is in certain respects like a testament to the closing medieval age; it shows what the Western world would have been had it not broken from its tradition.”

“If instilling the fear of hell is a form of “child abuse” perhaps Dante’s “Comedy,” with its graphic depictions of hell, should be forbidden to minors in Japan, and Japanese travel agents should not take families with minors to the famous Medieval Cemetery of Pisa or to countless European cathedrals whose frescos or paintings show how devils will torment the sinners in the afterlife (Buddhist depictions of Cold Hells are not less terrifying, by the way).”

“Dante has not deigned to take his inspiration from any other. He has wished to be himself, himself alone; in a word, to create. He has occupied a vast space, and has filled it with the superiority of a sublime mind. He is diverse, strong, and gracious. He has imagination, warmth, and enthusiasm. He makes his reader tremble, shed tears, feel the thrill of honor in a way that is the height of art. Severe and menacing, he has terrible imprecations for crime, scourgings for vice, sorrow for misfortune. As a citizen, affected by the laws of the republic, he thunders against its oppressors, but he is always ready to excuse his native city. Florence is ever to him his sweet, beloved country, dear to his heart. I am envious for my dear France, that she has never produced a rival to Dante; that this Colossus has not had his equal among us. No, there is no reputation which can be compared to his.”

“Time in culture is capable of many arrangements. Dante read today sets up different relations, very likely, from Dante read in his own decades, but the change is not in Dante nor in his truth, although many will say so. These truths, the truth of the voyage, of the skull-grinding horror, the white chance, leopard, star, and belief, are present. There is no particular question of death, since we are in a life where imaginative experience is given and taken.”

“In The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the Seventh Circle of Hell for people who charged usurious interest rates. Today we don't need the hellfire, the pitchforks, or the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law that caps interest rates on credit cards and consumer loans at 15 percent.”

“His very words are instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable thought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of their birth, and pregnant with the lightning which has yet found no conductor.”

“That great genius conceived, in his vast imagination, the mysteries of the invisible creation, and unveiled them to the eyes of the astonished world.”

“Dante Alighieri wrote in the fourteenth century that the spirit of poetry abounds "in the tangled constructions and defective pronunciations" of vernacular speech where language is renewed and transformed. His vision resonates today with the faulty speech of migrants creating the sounds and intonations of the future.”

“Sa réputation s'affermira toujours, parce qu'on ne le lit guère. II y a de lui une vingtaine de traits qu'on sait par cœur: cela suffit pour s'épargner la peine d'examiner le reste.”

“Dante's Inferno was the first book to give me a real thrill. I thought Doré's drawings in it remarkable, and I became exceedingly curious about his work.”