Top 380 Dante Alighieri Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

255. “Names are the consequences of things.”

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

257. “We forget what we have heard if we do not write it down.”

— Dante Alighieri

258. “Hasty opinion too often points the wrong way, and then affection for one’s own opinion binds up the intellect.”

— Dante Alighieri

259. “From now on you will have to cast off sloth in this way,” said my master, “for one does not gain fame sitting on-down cushions, or while under coverlets; and whoever consumes his life without fame leaves a mark of himself on earth like smoke in the air or foam in water. And therefore stand up; conquer your panting with the spirit that conquers in every battle, if it does not let the heavy body crush it down.”

— Dante Alighieri

260. “No one, while hope shows any hint of green, is lost beyond return to love eternal merely because the Church has voiced its curse.”

— Dante Alighieri

261. “The moon, with midnight now behind us, made the stars seem scarcer to us; it was shaped just like a copper basin, gleaming, new.”

— Dante Alighieri

262. “We were still some way from it, but not so far that I failed to discern in part what noble people occupied that place.”

— Dante Alighieri

263. “You’ll leave behind you all you hold most dear. And this will be the grievous arrow barb that exile, first of all, will shoot your way.”

— Dante Alighieri

264. “For when the powers of working intellect are wed to strength and absolute illwill, then humans cannot find a place to hide.”

— Dante Alighieri

265. “When virtue lights in us 11 a fire of love, that love ignites another within the soul that sees its burning.”

— Dante Alighieri

266. “Turn back and seek the safety of the shore; tempt not the deep, lest, losing unawares me and yourselves, you come to port no more.”

— Dante Alighieri

267. “This writing is of bone and sinew.”

— Dante Alighieri

268. “These innumerable seekers of safety first, and last, who take no risk either of suffering in a good cause or of scandal in a bad one, are here manifestly, nakedly, that which they were in life, the waste and rubbish of the universe, of no account to the world, unfit for Heaven and barely admitted to Hell. They have no need to die, for they ‘never were alive’.”

— Dante Alighieri

269. “My sins and crimes were horrible to hear. God, though, unendingly is good. His arms enfold and grasp all those who turn to Him.”

— Dante Alighieri

270. “And he, my strength, swung straight around to say: ‘Why so dismayed and faithless? Don’t you know that I am with you and still guide your steps?”

— Dante Alighieri

271. “For when the faculty of intellect is joined with brute force and with evil will, no man can win against such an alliance.”

— Dante Alighieri

272. “So that their fear is turned into desire.”

— Dante Alighieri

273. “She by her nature is cruel, so vicious she never can sate her voracious will, but, feasting well, is hungrier than before.”

— Dante Alighieri

274. “Ah! what caution must men use With those who look not at the deed alone, But spy into the thoughts with subtle skill!”

— Dante Alighieri

275. “The Comedy is a glorification of the ways of God, but it is also a sharp and great-minded protest at the ways in which men have thwarted the divine plan.”

— Dante Alighieri

276. “How cautious we must always be when faced with those who, far beyond observing deeds, can gaze in wisdom on our very thoughts.”

— Dante Alighieri

277. “Repentance fails? There can’t be absolution, nor penitence when willing ill goes on. That is, by contradiction, impossibile.”

— Dante Alighieri

278. “T. S. Eliot said that the last cantos of Heaven were as great as poetry can ever get.”

— Dante Alighieri

279. “In la palude va c’ha nome Stige.”

— Dante Alighieri

280. “You taught me how a man becomes eternal;.”

— Dante Alighieri

281. “How frozen I became and powerless then, Ask it not, reader, for I write it not, Because all language would be insufficient. I did not die, and I alive remained not. Think for thyself now, hast though ought of wit, What I became, being of both deprived.”

— Dante Alighieri

282. “She appeared dressed in the most patrician of colors, a subdued and decorous crimson, her robe bound round and adorned in a style suitable to her years. At that very moment, and I speak the truth, the vital spirit, the one that dwells in the most secret chamber of the heart, began to tremble so violently that even the most minute veins of my body were strangely affected; and trembling, it spoke these words: “Here is a god stronger than I who comes to rule over me.”

— Dante Alighieri

283. “In us, imagination is too mean for such great heights. And that’s no miracle. For no eye ever went beyond the sun.”

— Dante Alighieri

284. “Before me there were no created things, Only eternity, and I too, last eternal. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!”

— Dante Alighieri

285. “Stand firm as the tower that never shakes its top whatever wind may blow.”

— Dante Alighieri

286. “No sadness is greater than in misery to rehearse memories of joy.”

— Dante Alighieri

287. “That with him were, what time the Love Divine.”

— Dante Alighieri

288. “There is no greater sorrow then to recall our times of joy in wretchedness.”

— Dante Alighieri

289. “If the present world go astray, the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought.”

— Dante Alighieri

290. “You can stay and die or you can walk your ugly ass back through that gate. It’s your call, pal.”

— Dante Alighieri

291. “My thoughts were full of other things When I wandered off the path.”

— Dante Alighieri

292. “There, pride, avarice, and envy are the tongues men know and heed, a Babel of depsair.”

— Dante Alighieri

293. “Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground.”

— Dante Alighieri

294. “Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur michi.”

— Dante Alighieri

295. “Love, that allows no loved one to be excused from loving, seized me so fiercely with desire for him, it still will not leave me, as you can see. Love led us to one death.”

— Dante Alighieri

296. “If i thought i was replying to someone who would every return to the world, this flame would cease it’s flickering. But since no one has returned from these depths alive, if what I’ve heard is true, I will answer you without fear of infamy.”

— Dante Alighieri

297. “As fall the light autumnal leaves, one still the other following, till the bough strews all its honors on the earth below.”

— Dante Alighieri

298. “The more perfect a thing is, the more susceptible to good and bad treatment it is.”

— Dante Alighieri

299. “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

300. “All of nature is God’s art.”

— Dante Alighieri