Petrarch Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

Man has no greater enemy than himself. I have acted contrary to my sentiments and inclination; throughout our whole lives we do what we never intended, and what we proposed to do, we leave undone.

Petrarch
Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.

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

Petrarch
To be able to say how much you love is to love but little.

Petrarch
Today I climbed the highest mountain in this region, which is not improperly called Ventosus (Windy). The only motive for my ascent was the wish to see what so great a height had to offer.
Of Mont Ventoux in Provence, France

Petrarch
Who overrefines his argument brings himself to grief.

Petrarch
I find no peace, and I am not at war,
I fear and hope, and burn and I am ice.

Petrarch
O you who hear within these scattered verses
the sound of sighs with which I fed my heart
in my first errant youthful days when I
in part was not the man I am today.

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

Petrarch
Books have led some to learning and others to madness, when they swallow more than they can digest.

Petrarch
We are continually dying; I while I am writing these words, you while you are reading them, others when they hear them or fail to hear them. I shall be dying when you read this, you die while I write, we both are dying, we all are dying, we are dying forever.

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

Petrarch
It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.

Petrarch
Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.

Petrarch
I rejoiced in my progress, mourned my weaknesses, and commiserated the universal instability of human conduct. I had well-nigh forgotten where I was and our object in coming; but at last I dismissed my anxieties, which were better suited to other surroundings, and resolved to look about me and see what we had come to see. The sinking sun and the lengthening shadows of the mountain were already warning us that the time was near at hand when we must go. As if suddenly wakened from sleep, I turned about and gazed toward the west. I was unable to discern the summits of the Pyrenees, which form the barrier between France and Spain; not because of any intervening obstacle that I know of but owing simply to the insufficiency of our mortal vision.

Petrarch
And the fruit of my vanity is shame, and repentance, and the clear knowledge that whatever the world finds pleasing, is but a brief dream.

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

Petrarch
To-day I made the ascent of the highest mountain in this region, which is not improperly called Ventosum. My only motive was the wish to see what so great an elevation had to offer. I have had the expedition in mind for many years; for, as you know, I have lived in this region from infancy, having been cast here by that fate which determines the affairs of men. Consequently the mountain, which is visible from a great distance, was ever before my eyes, and I conceived the plan of some time doing what I have at last accomplished today.

Petrarch
Oh, my own Italy, though words be useless
to heal the mortal wounds
I see covering all your lovely body.

Petrarch