Italian Poet Quotes

Dante Alighieri

Petrarch

Nero

Francis of Assisi

Eugenio Montale

Ludovico Ariosto

Torquato Tasso

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

Man is only miserable so far as he thinks himself so.

Jacopo Sannazaro

There are fools who seek to understand the secrets of nature.

All books avoid, for they
Are the disgrace of our humanity,
And the assassins of the human race.
Mark well my words: the true
Philosophy consists in growing fat.

Giovanni Battista Lorenzi

Since the journey is a metaphor - the most ambiguous and seductive of metaphors, we tell ourselves - it can also be born of immobility. There is no need to drag our bodies around so much, all dressed up. It's hot, there are flies, diseases. It is enough to close our eyes, seated on a chair in the shade, to float on the waves of imagination. Isn't that what books are there for?

Check the ailment before it's got to you...

It was divine nature which gave us the country, and man's skill that built the cities.

Marcus Terentius Varro

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

Yet will the loved one's gentle smile suffice
To ope the door of Paradise,
And turn to joy our dark and cruel lot.

Francesco Maria Molza

Age overtakes us all; Our temples first; then on o'er cheek and chin, Slowly and surely, creep the frosts of Time. Up and do somewhat, ere thy limbs are sere.

All papas and mammas have exactly that sort of sight which distinguishes objects at a distance clearly, while they need spectacles to see those under their very noses.

Giovanni Ruffini

Your tiny hand is frozen, let me warm it in mine.

Giuseppe Giacosa

It has always been more difficult for a man to keep than to get; for, in the one case, fortune aids, which often assists injustice; but, in the other case, sense is required. Therefore, we often see a person deficient in cleverness rise to wealth; and then, from want of sense, roll head over heels to the bottom.

Giambattista Basile

Once thou art wed, no longer canst thou be
Lord of thyself.

Whoever he was who first depicted Amor as a boy, don't you think it was a wonderful touch? He was the first to see that lovers live without sense.

That blood which thou hast spill'd, should join you closely in an eternal bond.

Vittorio Alfieri

But that he wrought so high the specious tale,
As manifested plainly 'twas a lie.

Ludovico Ariosto

May I look on thee when my last hour comes; may I hold thy hand, as I sink, in my dying clasp.

The most dangerous aspect of present-day life is the dissolution of the feeling of individual responsibility. Mass solitude has done away with any difference between the internal and the external, between the intellectual and the physical.

Eugenio Montale

Let him look to it, who is pleased with the game of Tarocco, that the only signification of this word Tarocco, is stupid, foolish, simple, fit only to be used by Bakers, Coblers, and the vulgar, to play at most for the fourth part of a Carlino, at Tarocchi, or at Trionfi, or any Sminckiate whatever: which in every way signifies only foolery and idleness, feasting the eye with the Sun, and the Moon, and the twelve (signs) as children do.

Francesco Berni

The sweetest pleasures soonest cloy, And its best flavour temperance gives to joy.

Wise men and fools alike, in varying style,
Rush into print, and still, midst books galore,
The world grows ever older and more vile.

Giancarlo Passeroni

What will the stream become in its lengthened course, if it be so turbid at its source?

One doesn't remember the days, but rather the fleeting seconds.

Making art means not only using languages, but also creating new ones. To do this, new tools are indispensable. Even returning to more traditional languages such as linear poetry or narration, after being enriched by the experience of hypertext, hypermedia and multimedia, allows us to rethink the older forms of expression and transfer the lessons of the new media into even the more traditional modalities of language, such as narrative, for example.

Caterina Davinio