Top 380 Dante Alighieri Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Mankind is at its best when it is most free.”

— Dante Alighieri

252. “So, now, with me. That brute which knows no peace came ever nearer me and, step by step, drove me back down to where the sun is mute.”

— Dante Alighieri

253. “O foolish anxiety of wretched man, how inconclusive are the arguments which make thee beat thy wings below!”

— Dante Alighieri

254. “And as he, who with laboring breath has escaped from the deep to the shore, turns to the perilous waters and gazes.”

— Dante Alighieri

255. “The customs and fashions of men change like leaves on the bough, some of which go and others come.”

— Dante Alighieri

256. “I was so full of sleep at the time that I left the true way.”

— Dante Alighieri

257. “So may heaven’s grace clear away the foam from the conscience, that the river of thy thoughts may roll limpid thenceforth.”

— Dante Alighieri

258. “Nobility is the perfection in each thing of its proper nature.”

— Dante Alighieri

259. “Three dispositions adverse to Heaven’s still, – Incontinence, malice, and mad brutishness.”

— Dante Alighieri

260. “Curb your talent lest it speed where virtue does not guide.”

— Dante Alighieri

261. “Well do I see how the Eternal Ray, which, once seen, kindles love forevermore, already shines on you. If on your way some other thing seduce your love, my brother, it can only be a trace, misunderstood, of this, which you see shining through the other.”

— Dante Alighieri

262. “A prayer may chance to rise From one whose heart lives in the grace of God. A prayer from any other is unheeded.”

— Dante Alighieri

263. “When he saw me weeping, he answered: ‘You must go another road, if you wish to escape this savage place. This creature, that distresses you, allows no man to cross her path, but obstructs him, to destroy him, and she has so vicious and perverse a nature, that she never sates her greedy appetite, and after food is hungrier than before.”

— Dante Alighieri

264. “Of my sowing such straw I reap. O human folk, why set the heart there where exclusion of partnership is necessary.”

— Dante Alighieri

265. “Amor condusse noi ad una morte.”

— Dante Alighieri

266. “Many have justice in their hearts, but slowly it is let fly, for it comes not without council to the bow.”

— Dante Alighieri

267. “These are the radiancies of the perfected vision that sees the good and step by step moves nearer what it sees.”

— Dante Alighieri

268. “I learnt that the carnal sinners are condemned to these torments, they who subject their reason to their lust.”

— Dante Alighieri

269. “There is no greater sorrow Than to remember a happy time when you are In misery, and that, your Teacher knows.”

— Dante Alighieri

270. “We all so willingly record our gains, until the hour that leads us into loss. Then every single thought is tears and sadness.”

— Dante Alighieri

271. “I presumed to fix my look on the eternal light so long that I consumed my sight thereon.”

— Dante Alighieri

272. “Your fame is as the grass, whose hue comes and goes, and His might withers it by whose power it sprang from the lap of the earth.”

— Dante Alighieri

273. “He did what any hero must: set sail. But you, you turn back. Tell me why.”

— Dante Alighieri

274. “Christians, be steadier in what you do, not blown like feathers at the wind’s discretion, nor think that every water cleanses you...”

— Dante Alighieri

275. “Ah! Justice of our God! Who else could stow Such travails new and pains as met my glance!”

— Dante Alighieri

276. “Remember tonight for it’s the beginning of forever.”

— Dante Alighieri

277. “Love, that all gentle hearts so quickly know.”

— Dante Alighieri

278. “Haste denies all acts their dignity.”

— Dante Alighieri

279. “Small projects need much more help than great.”

— Dante Alighieri

280. “These have not the hope to die.”

— Dante Alighieri

281. “And what is laughter but a flashing of the soul, that is, a light appearing externally as it is within.”

— Dante Alighieri

282. “Honor is the greatest poet.”

— Dante Alighieri

283. “Fame is not won on downy plumes nor under canopies; the man who consumes his days without obtaining it leaves such mark of himself on earth as smoke in air or foam on water.”

— Dante Alighieri

284. “It may be that a more subtle person would find for this thing a reason of greater subtlety: but such is the reason that I find, and that liketh me best.”

— Dante Alighieri

285. “Let us go, for the length of our journey demands it.”

— Dante Alighieri

286. “Doubting charms me not less than knowledge.”

— Dante Alighieri

287. “Thy soul is by vile fear assailed.”

— Dante Alighieri

288. “Those things that have the power to hurt are to be feared: not those other things that are not fearful. I am made such, by God’s grace, that your suffering does not touch me, nor does the fire of this burning scorch me.”

— Dante Alighieri

289. “Oh how time hangs and drags till our aid comes!”

— Dante Alighieri

290. “Mankind, why do ye set your hearts on things That, of necessity, may not be shared?”

— Dante Alighieri

291. “I say that when she appeared, in whatever place, by the hope embodied in that marvelous greeting, for me no enemy remained, in fact I shone with a flame of charity that made me grant pardon to whoever had offended me: and if anyone had then asked me anything my reply would only have been: ‘Love’, with an aspect full of humility.”

— Dante Alighieri

292. “The writer, having lost his way in a gloomy forest, and being hindered by certain wild beasts from ascending a mountain, is met by Virgil, who promises to show him the punishments of Hell, and afterwards of Purgatory; and that he shall then be conducted by Beatrice into Paradise. He follows the Roman Poet.”

— Dante Alighieri

293. “The splendors that belong unto the fame of earth are but a wind, that in the same direction lasts not long.”

— Dante Alighieri

294. “Hence we may overthrow the error of those who think to form the moral character of others by speaking well and doing ill; forgetting that the hands of Jacob were more persuasive with his father than his words, though his hands deceived and his voice spake truth.”

— Dante Alighieri

295. “Seldom indeed does human virtue rise From trunk to branch.”

— Dante Alighieri

296. “What shall one do with the verse, if he knows not That?”

— Dante Alighieri

297. “Go right on and listen as thou goest.”

— Dante Alighieri

298. “Still desiring, we live without hope.”

— Dante Alighieri

299. “He tells his reader that writings should be expounded in four senses. The first.”

— Dante Alighieri

300. “There is no greater sorrow... than to be mindful of the happy time.”

— Dante Alighieri