Petrarch
Books have led some to learning and others to madness.Collection: Learning
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.Collection: Love
Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.Collection: Beauty
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?Collection: Health
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.Collection: Anger
To be able to say how much love, is love but little.Collection: Love
Suspicion is the cancer of friendship.Collection: Friendship
It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.
Man has no greater enemy than himself.
Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.
True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.
The aged love what is practical while impetuous youth longs only for what is dazzling.
A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.
Who naught suspects is easily deceived.
Often have I wondered with much curiosity as to our coming into this world and what will follow our departure.
How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance.
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.
There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.
And tears are heard within the harp I touch.
What name to call thee by, O virgin fair, I know not, for thy looks are not of earth And more than mortal seems thy countenances.
How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!
Man has not a greater enemy than himself.Collection: Men
You keep to your own ways and leave mine to me.Collection: Way
Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.Collection: Soul
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.Collection: Stars
Love is the crowning grace of humanity.Collection: Love Is
For though I am a body of this earth, my firm desire is born from the stars.Collection: Stars
Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.Collection: Dream
It is better to will the good than to know the truth.Collection: Knows
All pleasure in the world is a passing dream.Collection: Dream
Books can warm the heart with friendly words and counsel, entering into a close relationship with us which is articulate and aliveCollection: Book
I saw the tracks of angels in the earth: the beauty of heaven walking by itself on the world.Collection: Angel
Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds, and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Noble
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.Collection: Believe
Ruthless striving, overcomes everything.Collection: Overcoming
Life in itself is short enough, but the physicians with their art, know to their amusement, how to make it still shorter.Collection: Art
Nothing mortal is enduring, and there is nothing sweet which does not presently end in bitterness.Collection: Sweet
Continued work and application form my soul's nourishment. So soon as I commenced to rest and relax I should cease to live.Collection: Soul
Reality is always the foe of famous names.Collection: Reality
For virtue only finds eternal Fame.Collection: Virtue
The greater I am, the greater shall be my efforts.Collection: Effort
Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Thinking
When the poet died his cat was put to death and mummified.Collection: Cat
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.Collection: Climbing
Alack our life, so beautiful to see, With how much ease life losest, in a day, What many years with pain and toil amassed!Collection: Beautiful
Often on earth the gentlest heart is fain To feed and banquet on another's woe.Collection: Heart