Petrarch Quotes

All pleasure in the world is a passing dream.

If a hundred or a thousand people, all of the same
age, of the same constitution and habits, were suddenly
seized by the same illness, and one half of them were to
place themselves under the care of doctors, such as they
are in our time, whilst the other half entrusted themselves
to Nature and to their own discretion, I have not the
slightest doubt that there would be more cases of death
amongst the former, and more cases of recovery among
the latter.

It is better to will the good than to know the truth,

And I live on, but in grief and self-contempt,
Left here without the light I loved so much,
In a great tempest and with shrouds unkempt.

How quick the old woe follows a little bliss!

Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage.

While life is in your body, you have the rein of all thoughts in your hands.

Hitherto your eyes have been darkened and you have looked too much, yes, far too much, upon the things of earth. If these so much delight you what shall be your rapture when you lift your gaze to things eternal!

Books never pall on me. They discourse with us, they take counsel with us, and are united to us by a certain living chatty familiarity. And not only does each book inspire the sense that it belongs to its readers, but it also suggests the name of others, and one begets the desire of the other.

What name to call thee by, O virgin fair, I know not, for thy looks are not of earth And more than mortal seems thy countenances.

The greater I am, the greater shall be my efforts.

From thought to thought, from mountain peak to mountain. Love leads me on; for I can never still My trouble on the world's well beaten ways.

For style beyond the genius never dares.

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

Often have I wondered with much curiosity as to our coming into this world and what will follow our departure.

An equal doom clipp'd Time's blest wings of peace.

The end of doubt is the beginning of repose.

I would have preferred to have been born in any other time than our own.

And tears are heard within the harp I touch.

How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance.

I have taken pride in others, never in myself.

Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.

To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost every one is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds.

You keep to your own ways and leave mine to me.

I saw the tracks of angels in the earth: the beauty of heaven walking by itself on the world.

A good death does honour to a whole life.

Events appear sad, pleasant, or painful, not because they are so in reality, but because we believe them to be so and the light in which we look at them depends upon our own judgment.

Alack our life, so beautiful to see, With how much ease life losest, in a day, What many years with pain and toil amassed!

For death betimes is comfort, not dismay, and who can rightly die needs no delay.

He loves but lightly who his love can tell.

Who over-refines his argument brings himself to grief

Great errors seldom originate but with men of great minds.

Whyle I was abowte to chaunge myn olde lyff
What sorowe I suffred, dyseese, angre and stryff,
Cracchynge myn here, my chekys all totare,
Wrythynge my fyngres for angwysshe and care,
Watrynge the erthe with my byttre salte teres
That the crye of my syghes ascended to Goddys eres,
My knees with myn handys grasped togedyre soore,
And yitt I stode the same man I was afore
Tyl a depe profounde remembraunce att the laste
Hadd all my wrecchednesse afore myn eyn caste

My flowery and green age was passing away, and I feeling a chill in
the fires had been wasting my heart, for I was drawing near the
hillside above the grave.

Life in itself is short enough, but the physicians with their art, know to their amusement, how to make it still shorter.

The time will come when every change shall cease,
This quick revolving wheel shall rest in peace:
No summer then shall glow, not winter freeze;
Nothing shall be to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now shall ever last.

Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.

In my younger days I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair - my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did.

Nothing mortal is enduring, and there is nothing sweet which does not presently end in bitterness.

Mere elegance of language can produce at best but an empty renown.

Continued work and application form my soul's nourishment. So soon as I commenced to rest and relax I should cease to live.

Man has no greater enemy than himself.

Hope is incredible to the slave of grief.

I looked back at the summit of the mountain, which seemed but a cubit high in comparison with the height of human contemplation, were in not too often merged in the corruptions of the earth.

Books can warm the heart with friendly words and counsel, entering into a close relationship with us which is articulate and alive

Those spacious regions where our fancies roam,
Pain'd by the past, expecting ills to come,
In some dread moment, by the fates assign'd,
Shall pass away, nor leave a rack behind;
And Time's revolving wheels shall lose at last
The speed that spins the future and the past:
And, sovereign of an undisputed throne,
Awful eternity shall reign alone.

I rejoiced in my progress, mourned my weaknesses, and commiserated the universal instability of human conduct.

I desire that death find me ready and writing, or if it please Christ, praying and intears.

For virtue only finds eternal Fame.