Top 380 Dante Alighieri Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, and now that, and changes name as it changes direction.”

— Dante Alighieri

202. “Compassion is not a passion; rather a noble disposition of the soul, made ready to receive love, mercy, and other charitable passions.”

— Dante Alighieri

203. “No man may be so cursed by priest or pope but what the Eternal Love may still return while any thread of green lives on in hope.”

— Dante Alighieri

204. “A heavy thunder shattered the deep sleep in my head, so that I came to myself, like someone woken by force, and standing up, I moved my eyes, now refreshed, and looked round, steadily, to find out what place I was in. I found myself, in truth, on the brink of the valley of the sad abyss that gathers the thunder of an infinite howling. It was so dark, and deep, and clouded, that I could see nothing by staring into its depths.”

— Dante Alighieri

205. “As little flowers, which the chill of night has bent and huddled, when the white sun strikes, grow straight and open fully on their stems, so did I, too, with my exhausted force.”

— Dante Alighieri

206. “At this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe.”

— Dante Alighieri

207. “To run over better waters the little vessel of my genius now hoists her sails, as she leaves behind her a sea so cruel.”

— Dante Alighieri

208. “And my Guide to me: “He will not wake again until the angel trumpet sounds the day on which the host shall come to judge all men.”

— Dante Alighieri

209. “All of nature is God’s art.”

— Dante Alighieri

210. “Imagination, that dost so abstract us That we are not aware, not even when A thousand trumpets sound about our ears!”

— Dante Alighieri

211. “Less shame a greater fault would palliate.”

— Dante Alighieri

212. “Only as a man surrenders himself to Devine Love may he hope for salvation, and salvation is open to all who surrender themselves.”

— Dante Alighieri

213. “In this place piety lives where pity is dead.”

— Dante Alighieri

214. “The glory of Him who moves everything penetrates through the universe, and is resplendent in one part more and in another less.”

— Dante Alighieri

215. “Noble demands, by right, deserve the consequence of silent deeds.”

— Dante Alighieri

216. “And just as he who unwills what he wills and shifts what he intends to seek new ends so that he’s drawn from what he had begun, so was I in the midst of that dark land, because, with all my thinking, I annulled the task I had so quickly undertaken.”

— Dante Alighieri

217. “Could I have everything for which I long, You would not still endure this banishment way from human nature,” I replied. “Your image – dear, fatherly, benevolent – Being fixed inside my memory, has imbued My heart: when in the fair world, hour by hour You taught me, patiently, it was you who showed The way man makes himself eternal; therefore, The gratitude I feel toward you makes fit That while I live, I should declare it here. And what you tell me of my future, I write.”

— Dante Alighieri

218. “Our powers, whether of mind or tongue, cannot embrace that measure of understanding.”

— Dante Alighieri

219. “As flowerlets drooped and puckered in the night turn up to the returning sun and spread their petals wide on his new warmth and light-just so my wilted spirits rose again and such a heat of zeal surged through my veins that I was born anew.”

— Dante Alighieri

220. “O mortal men, be wary of how ye judge.”

— Dante Alighieri

221. “Because there is no man who can be true and just judge of himself, so much will self-love deceive him.”

— Dante Alighieri

222. “Love rules me. It determines what I ask.”

— Dante Alighieri

223. “Like the lark that soars in the air, first singing, then silent, content with the last sweetness that satiates it, such seemed to me that image, the imprint of the Eternal Pleasure.”

— Dante Alighieri

224. “That which had pleased me once, troubled by spirit.”

— Dante Alighieri

225. “That your art, as best it can, also follows Divine Intellect, as the disciple follows the master; So in reality, your art is, as it were, God’s grandchild.”

— Dante Alighieri

226. “O conscience, upright and stainless, how bitter a sting to thee is a little fault!”

— Dante Alighieri

227. “I by not doing, not by doing, lost.”

— Dante Alighieri

228. “Give unto us this day the daily manna Without which, in this desert where we dwell, He must go backward who would most advance.”

— Dante Alighieri

229. “Reason flies When following the senses, on clipped wings.”

— Dante Alighieri

230. “Love hath so long possessed me for his own And made his lordship so familiar.”

— Dante Alighieri

231. “Here all suspicion must be abandoned, All cowardice must be extinct.”

— Dante Alighieri

232. “Oh foolish desires of mortals! How weak are the reasons that lead us to not take off our flight from the ground.”

— Dante Alighieri

233. “In judgement be ye not too confident, Even as a man who will appraise his corn When standing in a field, ere it is ripe.”

— Dante Alighieri

234. “The more perfect a thing the more it feels good and evil.”

— Dante Alighieri

235. “Well, if the kid screws up, then I’ll just have to kick his ass.”

— Dante Alighieri

236. “Go forth and preach impostures to the world, But give them truth to build on.”

— Dante Alighieri

237. “One ought to be afraid of nothing other then things possessed of power to do us harm, but things innoucuous need not be feared.”

— Dante Alighieri

238. “Open your mind to what I shall explain, then close around it, for it is no learning to understand what one does not retain.”

— Dante Alighieri

239. “Through me you go to the grief wracked city; Through me you go to everlasting pain; Through me you go a pass among lost souls. Justice inspired my exalted Creator: I am a creature of the Holiest Power, of Wisdom in the Highest and of Primal Love. Nothing till I was made was made, only eternal beings. And I endure eternally. Surrender as you enter, every hope you have.”

— Dante Alighieri

240. “I come from a place, I long to return to:.”

— Dante Alighieri

241. “I hope for your sake you’ve got something inside that big body of yours!”

— Dante Alighieri

242. “So what brings you to this killing pickle?”

— Dante Alighieri

243. “As, pricked out with less and greater lights, between the poles of the universe, the Milky Way so gleameth white as to set very sages questioning.”

— Dante Alighieri

244. “Await no further word or sign from me: your will is free, erect, and whole – to act against that will would be to err: therefore I crown and miter you over yourself.”

— Dante Alighieri

245. “The ghost of the generous poet replied: ‘If I have understood your words correctly, your spirit is attacked by cowardly fear, that often weighs men down, so that it deflects them from honourable action, like a creature seeing phantoms in the dusk.”

— Dante Alighieri

246. “There’s not the least thing can be said or done, but people will talk and find fault.”

— Dante Alighieri

247. “Three sparks – pride, envy, and avarice – have been kindled in all hearts.”

— Dante Alighieri

248. “The Commedia, it must be remembered, is a vision of the progress of man’s soul toward perfection.”

— Dante Alighieri

249. “Like the pages of a book soaked shut by time.”

— Dante Alighieri

250. “Pure essence, and pure matter, and the two joined into one were shot forth without flaw, like three bright arrows from a three-string bow.”

— Dante Alighieri