I leave you with the best phrases of the Divine Comedy, a work written by Dante Allighieri and of great recognition in Italian and universal literature. It is believed that it may have been written between 1304 and 1321.
This long poem was one of the most important works in the transition to Renaissance thought, and it is divided into three parts: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Its structure is made up of edges.
Statue of Dante Allighieri, author of the Divine Comedy, in Piazza Santa Croce, Florence, Italy. Source: pixabay.com
-The demon is not as black as it is painted.
-The more perfect something is, the more pain and pleasure it feels.
-There is no greater affliction than remembering happiness in times of misery.
-You who are here, living soul, separate from these others already deceased.
-Love rules me. Determine what I ask for.
-The more a thing is perfect, the more pleasure and pain it feels.
-You must leave all suspicions here; you must kill your cowardice here.
-Let us go, as the length of this adventure demands it.
-I have not died, and yet I have lost the breath of life.
-Go in, but I warn you that the one who looks back turns back.
-I come from a place I long to return to.
-No one on this earth was ever so skillful to seek the good or run from danger.
-Soon you learn to love a gentle heart.
-There are still three behaviors contrary to heaven: incontinence, malice and brutality.
- Always the confusion of the people, the beginning was the evil of the city.
-Not less than knowing, I like doubting more.
-After their damages will come the crying caused by the just punishment.
-Those who are very attentive are well listened to.
-The devil is not as black as they paint him.
-Be witness to a power whose head has been crowned with signs of victory.
-To whom much is given, much is expected of him.
-Your soul is afflicted with vile fear.
- Speak briefly and clearly.
-Watch laziness with the spirit that overcomes any fight, if the serious body does not prevent it.
-Be as firm as a tower, whose top remains firm against any explosion.
-If the current world is going to perdition, the cause is within you, and only within you can you look for it.
-It was the third enclosure, that of the eternal rain, cursed, cold and dense: its rule and quality never change.
-Rejoice, Florence, seeing that you are great, that the sea and the earth flap your wings, and that your name is widely known in hell!
- Oh divine vengeance, how much you must be feared by everyone who reads what is manifest in my eyes!
-Love, that clings to the noble heart, it seized the beautiful person they took from me; I'm still offended by the way
-You only have to fear those things that can cause some kind of damage; but not the others, because they don't do anything wrong.
-The sensible world teaches us that the turns are so much faster, the more distant they are from the center.
-In the center of the Universe, at the point furthest from God, among the ice that surrounds the shadows, is Lucifer, emperor of the kingdom of pain.
-I had already fixed my eyes on his, and he stood up as if he despised hell with his chest and his forehead.
-The infernal squall, which never ceases, carries the spirits in its prey. When they arrive in front of the ruin, there the screams, the weeping, the lament; there they blaspheme divine power.
- If anger is added to evil, they will come after us more cruel than a dog that clings to a hare.
-We are lost, and only to that degree are we punished, since without hope we live in desire.
- To the fatigue war that you have with the soul, that is always victorious, that the body will not make it contain it.
-See then the loftiness and greatness of the eternal power, since so many mirrors did in which to multiply, one remaining in itself as before.
-That valuable fruit that all men look forward to in different branches, will give peace to your hungry soul today.
-It is a divine spirit that shows the way above without asking, and he hides himself with his light.
-When any of our senses retain a strong impression of delight or pain, the soul will concentrate completely on it, neglecting any other impulse it has.
-Comedy must be remembered as a vision of progress of the human soul towards perfection.
-The rigid justice that hurts me uses the place where I sinned to make more sighs escape.
"A righteous soul never crosses here, so if Charon gets angry with you, you will understand what it means."
-The worldly noise is not more than a breath of wind, now from one side, now from the other, and the name changes as the course changes.
-Love, that obliges every loved one to love, caught passion in me so strong that, as you can see, it still does not leave me
-Blessed are you that from our regions, the one who spoke first said again, to better die you acquire wisdom!
-That evil love arrived, what evils it seeks with its wisdom, and smoke and wind moved with the power with which it is endowed.
-Who are you who sit the chair to judge from afar a thousand miles with the sight of a short span?
-For me he goes to the suffering city, for me he goes to eternal suffering, for me he goes to the condemned people.
-Oh blind, ignorant and selfish greed, which stimulates the short mortal life and extends through all eternity.
-Fame is like the flower, which as soon as it sprouts, dies, and is withered by the same sun that made it rise from the ungrateful land.
"The sun is going," he continued, "and evening is coming; do not stop, accelerate the pace, while the West does not fold.
- When any of these keys fails and does not turn in the lock, he said, this entrance does not open.
-Open your mind to what I reveal to you and hold it inside; that science is not done, without retention of what has been understood.
-And I was warned about this torture, the hell of carnal sins, when reason gives way to desire.
- All your things have their death, like you; more are hidden some that last long, and the lives are short.
- Come on, what a long route awaits us. Thus she told me, and thus she made me enter the first fence that the abyss encircles.
-Don't imitate the lamb, which abandons its mother's milk, and for simplicity, fight with itself at its pleasure!
-That's how I went down from the first circle to the second with less place, and so much more pain, that when crying moves.
-Our feet had not yet moved when I noticed that that wall, which did not give the right to climb, was made of white marble and adorned with reliefs.
-The man must, whenever he can, close his lips before saying a truth that has the overtones of a lie; because you risk being ashamed without being guilty.
-He is Homer, the greatest of poets; the satirical Horacio comes later; third, Ovid; and last, Lucanus.
-Of how I was frozen and stunned, do not worry, reader, that I do not write it, because any talk would be little.
-The sky and all nature depend on that point. He sees the circle that is closest to him; And you'll know how fast he moves because of the burning love that drives him.
- As desires and other affections afflict us, it takes shape in the shadows, and it is the cause that admires you.
-The bottom is so dark that it doesn't reveal anything if you don't go up to the back of the arch, where the rock is more prominent.
-Oh militia of heaven that I now look at, pray for those who are on earth behind the devious bad example!
-Before me, it was not a created thing but the eternal and eternally hard. Everyone who enters here must abandon all hope.
-Your spirit is attacked by a cowardly fear, which often puts men under a weight that often dissuades them from honorable actions.
-Brother, your high wish must be fulfilled there in the last sphere, where everyone and mine will be fulfilled.
-Justice in their bosom many keep, and, prudent, shoot the bow late; but your people have it in full mouth.
-He in whom a thought boils over another thought is lost, because the fire of one softens the other.
-The anguish of the people who are here on my face has painted the pity that you think is fear.
-Look at the beast for which I have become: famous sage, save me from her, because it makes my pulse and veins tremble.
-Don't let fear stop you, as much as it might, it won't prevent you from lowering this rock.
And while he, with a weary breath, has escaped from the depths to the shore, he turns to the dangerous waters and contemplates.
-Whoever paints there has no one to guide him, but rather to guide, and from him originates the virtue that gives the nests its shape.
-Oh human race, born to fly high, why did you fall with just a little wind?
-And now go, Tuscan, I want more than to talk to you, to cry; thus the mind our conversation has clouded me.
-We will be able to see there what we believe, not proven, more in itself evident, which is the first truth in which man believes.
-There the horrible Minos was grinding. At the entrance he examines the sins; judges and orders according to relies.
-Pride, greed and envy are the languages that man knows and pays attention, a bustle of despair.
-I am not opposed, then, as long as a request is reasonable, acting is answered, and without grudging.
"Come on! Shake the sheets off this sloth, as sitting comfortably or lying in bed is no way to gain fame."
-This mountain is the type that climbing it at the beginning is more difficult; but as we go up, the incline becomes less cruel.
-Oh brother, we are all citizens of an authentic City; You say that I lived in Italy as a pilgrim.
"Let us now descend into the blind world," said the poet, all dead, "I will go first and you will come after."
-There are two righteous, but nobody listens to them; they are greed, pride and envy, the three torches that burn in the breasts.
-Love and reason, in mortals, for reasons known to you, they have the wings of various feathers.
"Oh, foolish cares of mortals!" How weak are the reasons that induce us not to take our flight from the earth!
- So much honor your fortune reserves for you, that one part and the other will hunger for you; further put the grass from the goat.
-Look at how he made the chest of his back: he wanted to look forward a lot, he looks back and walks backwards.
-In round we continue our route, talking about other things that I do not count; and when we got to that place where we got off we found Pluto: the enemy.
-Middle the way of my life, I found myself inside a dark forest, as I had lost my way.
-The heart you have made me so anxious to start walking, with that you have told me that I have already returned to the first purpose.
-You make a religious from whom you were born to wear a sword, and a king from whom you like sermons; and thus his route is lost.
-Thick hail, and dirty water and snow descend through the gloomy air; the earth stinks when it receives.
-High fantasy is lacking; more and my will and my desire turned like wheels that it propelled. The one who moves the sun and the stars.
- They came before Christianity, and they did not duly worship God: to these such I myself belong.
-With terror girding my head I said: «Master, what is it that I hear, and who are these that pain abates?
-Oh you, lust that mortals drown in your bosom, without being able to take their eyes out of your waves!
-The sky calls you and revolves around you, showing its immortal beauties, and you look at the earth; and so the one who knows everything punishes you.
-The day that man allows true love to appear, things well done will be confused and everything that we believed to be correct and true will be reversed.
-How cautious should men be with those who not only know works, but also think inside!
-Take your origin into account. You were not created to live like the savages, but to follow virtue and knowledge.
-Are you Virgilio, then, and that fountain from whom flows such a river of eloquence? You are my model and my teacher; the only one is you from whom I took the beautiful style that has given me honor.
-There is behind a demon that opens us, so crudely, to the cut of the sword, each one of this row submitting.
-You will test how bitterly someone else's bread tastes and how hard it is to go up and down other people's stairs.
-After long dissensions there must be blood, and the savage side will drive out the other with great offenses; then it will be necessary for this one to fall and the other to rise.
-Consider your progeny: you are not done to live as brutes, more to achieve virtue and science.
-It is known how little the burning flame of love lasts in women, when the look and the hand are not capable of continually enlivening it.
- Don't you ask me what spirits are these you are seeing? I want you to know, before continuing, that they did not sin: and even if they have merits, it is not enough, because they are without baptism.
-Knowing about some is good; It will be better for the rest to remain silent, for as many as there are, time is short.
-All the others that you see here, sowers of scandal and schism alive were, and are thus torn apart.
-This miserable luck have the sad souls of those people who lived without glory and without infamy.
-The souls are mixed with the infamous chorus of angels who did not rebel, not out of loyalty to God, but to themselves.
-Old fame in the world calls the blind, people are greedy, envious and arrogant: always get rid of their customs.
-All things keep an order between them, and therefore the form makes the universe look like God.
-If greed yells at you for other things, be men, and not foolish sheep, lest the Jews mock!
-Your own memory shapes a fear. Death can be hardly more bitter than this place!
-When a ferocious soul has left the body that it has disunited, Minos sends it to the seventh grave.
-In the depth of such sorrow the tongue moves in vain; the language of our memory and our senses lacks its own vocabulary for such pain.
-Look how I tear myself! And look how battered Muhammad is! In front of me Ali, crying, marches, turns his face from neck to forelock.
-I am angelic love, which spread the high joy that is born from the womb that was the shelter of our desire; and I will do so, queen of heaven, as long as you follow after your son and make the sphere in which you live holy.
-The day was leaving, the dark air to the beings that inhabit the earth took away their fatigue; and I was only preparing to sustain the war, against the path and against the suffering that my mind will evoke without erring.
-The man who falls asleep will never find his fame, and his wishes and life will pass like a dream, and the traces of his memories will vanish in time, like smoke in the air.
-Without you having uttered it, I have understood your desire better than you have anything true; because I see it in the true mirror that makes a reflection of itself in other things, but the others in it are not reflected.
-The great sages say that the phoenix dies and then is reborn, as the five centuries approach: not barley or grass grazes in life, but incense, tears and amomo, and dies among tuberose and myrrh.
-I saw many herds of naked souls, all crying, full of misery, and in various postures: some people were lying face up; cowering, some sat, and others walked incessantly.
-There are laws, but who administers them? Nobody, because his shepherd perhaps chews the cud, but his hoof does not split; and the people, who know that their guide only tends to that good of which they eat.
-Don't venture, man, to judge, like one who appreciates the wheat sown before it has ripened; that the brambles I have seen compose when in winter they were rough and rigid.
-For your sake, I think and decide that you come after me, and I will be your guide, and I will take you to an eternal place, where you will hear the desperate howl, and you will see the ancient shadows, crying out the second death.
-Among all that you have seen since we passed through that door, whose thresholds are denied to anyone, you have not seen anything more notorious than the present river that extinguishes the flames before touching it.
-Salvation must derive from understanding, and understanding comes from abundant experience, which must be earned through the discipline of shaping our absolute attention.
-Only to a mind, by one's own shame or by the other's embarrassed, it will be abrupt what you say. Remove all lies and reveal what you have seen; and let the mangy ones scratch.
-We climbed, him first and me later, until a round opening opened in front of us and I saw the beautiful things that the sky houses, and we went out to see the stars once more.
-The deep sleep of my mind broke a great thunder, so that like someone who awakens by force, I recovered myself, the recovered sight I returned around wanting to know where I was.
-Life is a "valley of tears", a period of trials and suffering, an unpleasant but necessary preparation for after death, where man can expect happiness.
-Woman who gives strength to my hope, and for my salvation you have endured stepping on hell, of so many things that I have seen here, your power and your mercy, virtue and grace I recognize.