13th-century Poet Quotes

Dante Alighieri

Rumi

Saadi

We are but a day in this world, and in that day the fashion is changed a thousand times: all seek liberty, yet all deprive themselves of it.

Dante Alighieri

Let people catch something from your heart that will cause no discomfort, but help them to sing.

Whoever interrupts the conversation of others to make a display of his own fund of knowledge, makes notorious his own stock of ignorance.

Bishop Köyu said (it seems to me very admirably), 'It is only a person of poor understanding who wishes to arrange things in complete sets. It is incompleteness that is desirable.' In everything regularity is bad. To leave a thing unfinished gives interest, and makes for lengthened life. They say that even in building the [imperial] palace an unfinished place is always left. In the writings of the ancients, inner and outer [Buddhist and non-Buddhist], there are many missing chapters and parts.

The past has flown away. The coming month and year do not exist. Ours only is the present's tiny point.

Mahmoud Shabestari

Many strange birds are on the air abroad, Nor are all of one flights of one force, But each after his kind dissimilar.

Guido Guinizzelli

I am God, says Love, for Love is God and God is Love, and this Soul is God by the condition of Love. I am God by divine nature and this Soul is God by the condition of Love. Thus this precious beloved of mine is taught and guided by me, without herself, for she is transformed into me, and such a perfect one, says Love, takes my nourishment.

Marguerite Porete

If I told you about a land of love...would you swallow it as a remedy?