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

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

255. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

257. “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

258. “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

259. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

261. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

263. “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

264. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

268. “Mankind is at its best when it is most free.”

— Dante Alighieri

269. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

277. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

281. “Amor condusse noi ad una morte.”

— Dante Alighieri

282. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

286. “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

287. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

293. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

295. “Honor is the greatest poet.”

— Dante Alighieri

296. “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

297. “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

298. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

300. “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