Top 60 Petrarch Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A good death does honour to a whole life.”

— Petrarch

2. “Ruthless striving, overcomes everything.”

— Petrarch

3. “A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.”

— Petrarch

4. “It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.”

— Petrarch

5. “Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.”

— Petrarch

6. “Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.”

— Petrarch

7. “Books have led some to learning and others to madness.”

— Petrarch

8. “I would have preferred to have been born in any other time than our own.”

— Petrarch

9. “Five enemies of peace inhabit with us – avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.”

— Petrarch

10. “Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.”

— Petrarch

11. “You keep to your own ways and leave mine to me.”

— Petrarch

12. “Man has no greater enemy than himself. I have acted contrary to my sentiments and inclination; throughout our whole lives we do what we never intended, and what we proposed to do, we leave undone.”

— Petrarch

13. “For though I am a body of this earth, my firm desire is born from the stars.”

— Petrarch

14. “Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.”

— Petrarch

15. “How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance.”

— Petrarch

16. “Suspicion is the cancer of friendship.”

— Petrarch

17. “I rejoiced in my progress, mourned my weaknesses, and commiserated the universal instability of human conduct.”

— Petrarch

18. “Man has not a greater enemy than himself.”

— Petrarch

19. “There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.”

— Petrarch

20. “Where you are is of no moment, but only what you are doing there. It is not the place that ennobles you, but you the place, and this only by doing that which is great and noble.”

— Petrarch

21. “All pleasure in the world is a passing dream.”

— Petrarch

22. “Hitherto your eyes have been darkened and you have looked too much, yes, far too much, upon the things of earth. If these so much delight you what shall be your rapture when you lift your gaze to things eternal!”

— Petrarch

23. “Books can warm the heart with friendly words and counsel, entering into a close relationship with us which is articulate and alive.”

— Petrarch

24. “I looked back at the summit of the mountain, which seemed but a cubit high in comparison with the height of human contemplation, were in not too often merged in the corruptions of the earth.”

— Petrarch

25. “I saw the tracks of angels in the earth: the beauty of heaven walking by itself on the world.”

— Petrarch

26. “To be able to say how much love, is love but little.”

— Petrarch

27. “From thought to thought, from mountain peak to mountain. Love leads me on; for I can never still My trouble on the world’s well beaten ways.”

— Petrarch

28. “I freeze and burn, love is bitter and sweet, my sighs are tempests and my tears are floods, I am in ecstasy and agony, I am possessed by memories of her and I am in exile from myself.”

— Petrarch

29. “And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.”

— Petrarch

30. “Nothing mortal is enduring, and there is nothing sweet which does not presently end in bitterness.”

— Petrarch

31. “Often have I wondered with much curiosity as to our coming into this world and what will follow our departure.”

— Petrarch

32. “When the poet died his cat was put to death and mummified.”

— Petrarch

33. “And tears are heard within the harp I touch.”

— Petrarch

34. “The greater I am, the greater shall be my efforts.”

— Petrarch

35. “Mere elegance of language can produce at best but an empty renown.”

— Petrarch

36. “Events appear sad, pleasant, or painful, not because they are so in reality, but because we believe them to be so and the light in which we look at them depends upon our own judgment.”

— Petrarch

37. “Continued work and application form my soul’s nourishment. So soon as I commenced to rest and relax I should cease to live.”

— Petrarch

38. “An equal doom clipp’d Time’s blest wings of peace.”

— Petrarch

39. “Virtue is health, vice is sickness.”

— Petrarch

40. “Love is the crowning grace of humanity.”

— Petrarch

41. “Who naught suspects is easily deceived.”

— Petrarch

42. “Where are the numerous constructions erected by Agrippa, of which only the Pantheon remains? Where are the splendorous palaces of the emperors?”

— Petrarch

43. “Alack our life, so beautiful to see, With how much ease life losest, in a day, What many years with pain and toil amassed!”

— Petrarch

44. “Wanting is not enough, long and you attain it.”

— Petrarch

45. “While life is in your body, you have the rein of all thoughts in your hands.”

— Petrarch

46. “To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost every one is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds.”

— Petrarch

47. “It may be only glory that we seek here, but I persuade myself that, as long as we remain here, that is right. Another glory awaits us in heaven and he who reaches there will not wish even to think of earthly fame.”

— Petrarch

48. “I desire that death find me ready and writing, or if it please Christ, praying and intears.”

— Petrarch

49. “I have friends whose society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of all ages; distinguished in war, in council, and in letters; easy to live with, always at my command.”

— Petrarch

50. “Do you suppose there is any living man so unreasonable that if he found himself stricken with a dangerous ailment he would not anxiously desire to regain the blessing of health?”

— Petrarch