Petrarch Quotes

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

People often seem surprised that I choose to write science fiction and fantasy - I think they expect a history professor to write historical fiction, or literary fiction, associating academia with the kinds of novels that academic lit critics prefer. But I feel that speculative fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, is a lot more like the pre-modern literature I spend most of my time studying than most modern literature is. Ursula Le Guin has described speculative fiction authors as "realists of a larger reality" because we imagine other ways of being, alternatives to how people live now, different worlds, and raise questions about hope and change and possibilities that different worlds contain.

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Writing for a more distant audience, authors tended to be speculative, using exotic perspectives, fantastic creatures, imaginary lands, allegories, prophecies, stories within stories, techniques which, like science fiction and fantasy, use alternatives rather than one reality in order to ask questions, not about the way things are, but about plural ways things have been and could be. Such works have an empathy across time, expecting and welcoming an audience as alien as the other worlds that they describe. When I read Voltaire responding to Francis Bacon, responding to Petrarch, responding to Boethius, responding to Seneca, responding to Plutarch, I want to respond to them too, to pass it on. So it makes sense to me to answer in the genre people ha ~ Ada Palmer

[He who can describe how his heart is ablaze is burning on a small pyre] ~ Petrarch, Sonnet 137
(from Montaigne, On sadness) ~ Francesco Petrarca

Tacitus appears to have been as great an enthusiast as Petrarch for the revival of the republic and universal empire. He has exerted the vengeance of history upon the emperors, but has veiled the conspiracies against them, and the incorrigible corruption of the people which probably provoked their most atrocious cruelties. Tyranny can scarcely be practised upon a virtuous and wise people. ~ John Adams

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! ~ Petrarch

She appeared to him more beautiful than he had ever seen her yet. Beautiful with a beauty which was wholly feminine and angelic, with a complete beauty which would have made Petrarch sing and Dante kneel. [...] ~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables.

I have taken pride in others, never in myself. ~ Petrarch

Reality is always the foe of famous names. ~ Petrarch

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

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

All pleasure in the world is a passing dream. ~ Petrarch

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 ~ Petrarch

He thought her more beautiful than ever, with a beauty that was at once feminine and angelic, that wholeness of beauty that had moved Petrarch to song and brought Dante to his knees. ~ Victor Hugo

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. ~ Petrarch

Petrarch sometimes wrote letters to long-dead authors. He was also a dedicated hunter of classic manuscripts. Once, after discovering some previously unknown works of Cicero, he wrote Cicero the news. ~ David Markson

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. ~ Petrarch

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

Laughter, on the other hand, " Petrarch went on, "is an explosion that tears us away from the world and throws us back into our own cold solitude. Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry. That's why I tell you yet again, and you want to keep in mind: Boccaccio doesn't understand love. Love can never be laughable. Love has nothing in common with laughter. ~ Milan Kundera

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. ~ Petrarch

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

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

And tears are heard within the harp I touch. ~ Petrarch

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

The look of good sense and prudence, even of the best kind, differs from that of genius, in that the former bears the stamp of subjection to the will, while the latter is free from it. And therefore one can well believe the anecdote [...] how once at the court of the Visconti, when Petrarch and other noblemen and gentlemen were present, Galeazzo Visconti told his son, who was then a mere boy (he was afterwards first Duke of Milan), to pick out the wisest of the company; how the boy looked at them all for a little, and then took Petrarch by the hand and led him up to his father, to the great admiration of all present. For so clearly does nature set the mark of her dignity on the privileged among mankind that even a child can discern it.

Therefore, I should advise my sagacious countrymen, if ever again they wish to trumpet about for thirty years a very commonplace person as a great genius, not to choose for the purpose such a beer-house-keeper physiognomy as was possessed by that philosopher [Hegel], upon whose face nature had written, in her clearest characters, the familiar inscription, "commonplace person. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

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. ~ Petrarch

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. ~ Petrarch

I do not now begin,
I still adore
Her whom I early cherish'd in my breast;
Then once again with prudence dispossess'd,
And to whose heart I'm driven back once more.
The love of Petrarch, that all-glorious love,
Was unrequited, and, alas, full sad ... ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

He loves but lightly who his love can tell. ~ Petrarch

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

My galley, charged with forgetfulness,
Thorough sharp seas in winter nights doth pass
'Tween rock and rock; and eke mine enemy, alas,
That is my lord, steereth with cruelness;
And every oar a thought in readiness,
As though that death were light in such a case.
An endless wind doth tear the sail apace
Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness.
A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain,
Hath done the weared cords great hinderance;
Wreathed with error and eke with ignorance.
The stars be hid that led me to this pain.
Drowned is reason that should me consort,
And I remain despairing of the port. ~ Thomas Wyatt

I finish a short afternoon shift that I spent learning about book descriptions with George. It is an arcane system that the Internet is putting paid to, where fair is foul and good is bad and perfect means you are a charlatan. Price-clipped is bad. Second impression is bad. Inscribed is bad, unless it is by the author, and then inscribed is good, but nearly as good as signed. Unless the inscription is to someone patently important - To my dear Laura, love from Petrarch. ~ Deborah Meyler

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

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

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

Literature before the Renaissance had frequently offered ideal patterns for living which were dominated by the ethos of the church, but after the Reformation the search for individual expression and meaning took over. Institutions were questioned and re-evaluated, often while being praised at the same time. But where there had been conventional modes of expression, reflecting ideal modes of behaviour - religious, heroic, or social - Renaissance writing explored the geography of the human soul, redefining its relationship with authority, history, science, and the future. This involved experimentation with form and genre, and an enormous variety of linguistic and literary innovations in a short period of time.
Reason, rather than religion, was the driving force in this search for rules to govern human behaviour in the Renaissance world. The power and mystique of religion had been overthrown in one bold stroke: where the marvellous no longer holds sway, real life has to provide explanations. Man, and the use he makes of his powers, capabilities, and free will, is thus the subject matter of Renaissance literature, from the early sonnets modelled on Petrarch to the English epic which closes the period, Paradise Lost, published after the Restoration, when the Renaissance had long finished.

The Reformation gave cultural, philosophical, and ideological impetus to English Renaissance writing. The writers in the century following the Reformation had to explore and redef ~ Ronald Carter

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. ~ Petrarch

Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure. ~ Petrarch

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. ~ Petrarch

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. ~ Petrarch

For virtue only finds eternal Fame. ~ Petrarch

She closed her eyes; and in the sweet slumber lying
her spirit tiptoed from its lodging place.
It's folly to shrink in fear, if this is dying;
for death looked lovely in her face. ~ Francesco Petrarca

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

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

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

I hold Petrarch at leastly partly responsible for the disconcerting gap between Italian's written and spoken vocabularies. The ~ Dianne Hales

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. ~ Petrarch

For a man to become a poet (witness Petrarch and Dante), he must be in love, or miserable. ~ Lord Byron

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. ~ Petrarch

We wished to go to the Ambrosian Library, and we did that also. We saw a manuscript of Virgil, with annotations in the handwriting of Petrarch, the gentleman who loved another man's Laura, and lavished upon her all through life a love which was a clear waste of the raw material. It was sound sentiment, but bad judgment. It brought both parties fame, and created a fountain of commiseration for them in sentimental breasts that is running yet. But who says a word in behalf of poor Mr. Laura? (I do not know his other name.) Who glorifies him? Who bedews him with tears? Who writes poetry about him? Nobody. How do you suppose he liked the state of things that has given the world so much pleasure? How did he enjoy having another man following his wife every where and making her name a familiar word in every garlic-exterminating mouth in Italy with his sonnets to her pre-empted eyebrows? They got fame and sympathy--he got neither. This is a peculiarly felicitous instance of what is called poetical justice. It is all very fine; but it does not chime with my notions of right. It is too one-sided--too ungenerous. ~ Mark Twain

For style beyond the genius never dares. ~ Petrarch

The end of doubt is the beginning of repose. ~ Petrarch

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

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. ~ Petrarch

When a passion is not realized ... it fades away, or becomes ideal worship
Dante
Petrarch
that sort of thing! ~ Ada Leverson

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

Man has no greater enemy than himself. ~ Petrarch

Who over-refines his argument brings himself to grief ~ Petrarch

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. ~ Petrarch

He reaches for his pen. He yawns and puts it down and picks it up again. I shall be found dead at my desk, he thinks, like the poet Petrarch. The poet wrote many unsent letters: he wrote to Cicero, who died twelve hundred years before he was born. He wrote to Homer, who possibly never even existed; but I, I have enough to do with Lord Lisle, and the fish traps, and the Emperor's galleons tossing on the Middle Sea. Between one dip of the pen, Petrarch writes, 'between one dip of the pen and the next, the time passes: and I hurry, I drive myself, and I speed towards death. We are always dying - I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or block their ears; they are all dying. ~ Hilary Mantel

Great errors seldom originate but with men of great minds. ~ Petrarch

Laura, illustrious through her own virtues, and long famed through my verses, first appeared to my eyes in my youth, in the year of our Lord 1327, on the sixth day of April, in the church of St. Clare in Avignon, at matins; and in the same city, also on the sixth day of April, at the same first hour, but in the year 1348, the light of her life was withdrawn from the light of day, while I, as it chanced, was in Verona, unaware of my fate ... ~ Francesco Petrarca

A good death does honour to a whole life. ~ Petrarch

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

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

How quick the old woe follows a little bliss! ~ Petrarch

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. ~ Petrarch

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. ~ Petrarch

Hope is incredible to the slave of grief. ~ Petrarch

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