Top 380 Dante Alighieri Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

303. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

305. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

307. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

309. “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

310. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

322. “Amor condusse noi ad una morte.”

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

325. “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

326. “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

327. “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

328. “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

329. “Allegro mi sembrava Amor tenendo meo core in mano, e ne le braccia avea madonna involta in un drappo dormendo.”

— Dante Alighieri

330. “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

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

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

— Dante Alighieri

335. “I might then squeeze the juices of my thought more fully out of me.”

— Dante Alighieri

336. “He who awaits the call, but sees the need, Already sets his spirit to refuse it.”

— Dante Alighieri

337. “O faithful conscience, delicately pure, how doth a little failing wound thee sore!”

— Dante Alighieri

338. “Before me nothing was created but eternal things and I endure eternally. Abandon every hope, ye that enter.”

— Dante Alighieri

339. “Quick! Quick! Let’s lose no time through lack of love!’ so all of those behind now shouted out. ‘For zeal in doing good turns grace new green.”

— Dante Alighieri

340. “Thus into the sempiternal justice the sight conferred in your world penetrates only as far as the eye does into the sea, for though close to shore you may see the bottom, on the open sea you cannot, and nonetheless it is there, but hidden by being deep.”

— Dante Alighieri

341. “My senses down, when the true.”

— Dante Alighieri

342. “I had set foot in that part of life beyond which one cannot go with any hope of returning.”

— Dante Alighieri

343. “It treats of the most universal values – good and evil, man’s responsibility, free will and predestination; yet it is intensely personal and political, for it was written out of the anguish of a man who saw his life blighted by the injustice and corruption of his times.”

— Dante Alighieri

344. “Questo sonetto ha due parti principali; che ne la prima intendo chiamare li fedeli d’Amore per quelle parole di Geremia profeta che dicono: “O vos omnes qui transitis per viam, attendite et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus”, e pregare che mi sofferino d’audire;.”

— Dante Alighieri

345. “Esta suerte miserable tienen las tristes almas de aquellos que vivieron sin infamia y sin honor.”

— Dante Alighieri

346. “You have the light that shows you right from wrongs, and your Free Will, which, though it may grow faint in its struggles with the heavens, can still surmount all obstacles if nurtured well. You are free of subjects of a greater power, a nobler nature that creates your mind... So, if the world has gone astray, the cause lies in yourselves and only there!”

— Dante Alighieri

347. “Like those who see so clearly while they dream that marks of feeling, when their dreaming ends, remain, though nothing more returns to mind, so I am now. For nearly all I saw has gone, even if, still, within my heart, there drops the sweetness that was born from that.”

— Dante Alighieri

348. “Love that is kindled by virtue, will, in another find reply, as long as that love’s flame appears without...”

— Dante Alighieri

349. “Because your human longings point to where portions grow smaller in shared fellowship, meanness of mind must make the bellows sigh. 52 If love, though, seeking for the utmost sphere, should ever wrench your longings to the skies, such fears would have no place within your breast. 55 For, there, the more that we can speak of “ours”, the more each one possesses of the good and, in that cloister, caritas burns brighter.”

— Dante Alighieri

350. “What blind cupidity, what crazy rage impels us onwards in our little lives – then dunks us in this stew to all eternity!”

— Dante Alighieri