Petrarch famous quotes

Love is the crowning grace of humanity.
-- Petrarch

#Love Is #Humanity #Grace

Virtue is health, vice is sickness.
-- Petrarch

#Vices #Sickness #Virtue

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

#Love #Life #Heart

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

#Forgiveness #Peace #Anger

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

#Sweet #Bitterness #Doe

Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds, and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.
-- Petrarch

#Book #Jewels #Purple

Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.
-- Petrarch

#Dream #Sleep #May

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

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

#Love #Littles #Able

Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
-- Petrarch

#Beauty #Beautiful #House

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

#Art #Amusement #Physicians

Go, grieving rimes of mine, to that hard stone Whereunder lies my darling, lies my dear, And cry to her to speak from heaven's sphere.
-- Petrarch

#Lying #Grief #Grieving

It may be only glory that we seek here, but I persuade myself that, as long as we remain here, that is right. Another glory awaits us in heaven and he who reaches there will not wish even to think of earthly fame.
-- Petrarch

#Thinking #Long #Heaven

Death had his grudge against me, and he got up in the way, like an armed robber, with a pike in his hand.
-- Petrarch

#Death #Hands #Way

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

#Men #Suffering #Knees

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

#Life #Grief #Self

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

#Death #Heart #Drawing

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

#Writing #Hands #Mind

How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!
-- Petrarch

#Earth #Fortune

Who naught suspects is easily deceived.
-- Petrarch

#Deceived

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

#Men #Enemy #Undone

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

#Merit #Thrones #Fortune

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

#Death #Needs #Delay

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

#Peace #Wings #Equal

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

#Ignorance #Sea #Rocks

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

#Names #Looks #Earth

Do you suppose there is any living man so unreasonable that if he found himself stricken with a dangerous ailment he would not anxiously desire to regain the blessing of health?
-- Petrarch

#Men #Blessing #Desire

A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.
-- Petrarch

#Inspirational #Cutting #Desire

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

#Angel #Track #Heaven

Suspicion is the cancer of friendship.
-- Petrarch

#Friendship #Cancer #Suspicion

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

#Summer #Time #Rest In Peace

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

#Time #Pain #Fate

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

#Men #Evil #Utterance

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

#Curiosity #World #Departure

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.
-- Petrarch

#Burden #Pens

Books have led some to learning and others to madness.
-- Petrarch

#Book #Madness

And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.
-- Petrarch

#Stars #Ocean #Men

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

#Tears #Harps #Heard

I had got this far, and was thinking of what to say next, and as my habit is, I was pricking the paper idly with my pen. And I thought how, between one dip of the pen and the next, time goes on, and I hurry, drive myself, and speed toward death. We are always dying. I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or stop their ears, they are all dying.
-- Petrarch

#Writing #Thinking #Dying

I freeze and burn, love is bitter and sweet, my sighs are tempests and my tears are floods, I am in ecstasy and agony, I am possessed by memories of her and I am in exile from myself.
-- Petrarch

#Sweet #Memories #Love Is

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

#Mountain #World #Way

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

#Climbing #Mountain #Earth

For style beyond the genius never dares.
-- Petrarch

#Style #Genius #Dare

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

#Dream #World #Pleasure

Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.
-- Petrarch

#Soul #Breathe #Absence

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

#Grief #Argument

Where you are is of no moment, but only what you are doing there. It is not the place that ennobles you, but you the place, and this only by doing that which is great and noble.
-- Petrarch

#Noble #Moments #Where You Are

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

#Style #Language #Empty

I have friends whose society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of all ages; distinguished in war, in council, and in letters; easy to live with, always at my command.
-- Petrarch

#Country #War #Book

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

#Death #Doe #Whole Life

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

#Beautiful #Pain #Loss

Man has not a greater enemy than himself.
-- Petrarch

#Men #Enemy

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

#Littles #Woe #Bliss

Often on earth the gentlest heart is fain To feed and banquet on another's woe.
-- Petrarch

#Heart #Earth #Woe

Hope is incredible to the slave of grief.
-- Petrarch

#Grief #Sorrow #Incredibles

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

#Believe #Reality #Light