Divine Comedy Quotes

The Divine Comedy is a political poem and when you say poetry is not about - he's always quoted out of context, that "poetry makes nothing happen," that doesn't mean you shrug your shoulders and don't try to make anything happen. And Dante felt that poetry was engaged, there was a point of view; it's not my point of view, it's orthodox medieval Christianity, and I have my troubles with that. He didn't feel that you could just rule out so important a section of life - we care about these things, and it's out of caring about them that we write poetry.

If Dante was writing The Divine Comedy in 2013, he might very well have set part of it in the suburbs.

The Divine Comedy' is very sophisticated but also very popular.

A great model for this is the way that Dante calls on Virgil at the beginning of 'The Inferno,' 'The Divine Comedy,' to help guide him through the underworld.

I found myself within a forest dark.

Midway upon the journey of our life

He listens well who takes notes.

When I had journeyed half of our life's way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray.

I believe in the future a new Dante will write a new Divine Comedy.

I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightfoward pathway had been lost. Ah me! How hard a thing is to say, what was this forest savage, rough, and stern, which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is little more.

The entire Bible, viewed as a "divine comedy," is contained within a U-shaped story of this sort, one in which man, as explained, loses the tree and water of life at the beginning of Genesis and gets them back at the end of Revelation.

The devil is not as black as he is painted.

Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice.

For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.

From a little spark may burst a flame.

I saw within Its depth how It conceives All things in a single volume bound by Love of which the universe is the scattered leaves.

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

O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?

In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.

We're taking part in a divine comedy and we should realise that the play is always a comedy, in that we're all ultimately ridiculous.

Strangely, Dante's Divine Comedy did not produce a prose of that creative height or it did so after centuries.

Remember tonight...for it's the beginning of forever. - Dante Alighieri

Remember tonight... for it is the beginning of always.

This miserable way is taken by the sorry souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise. They now commingle with the coward angels, the company of those who were not rebels nor faithful to their God, but stood apart. The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened, have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them - even the wicked cannot glory in them.

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

The love that moves the sun and the other stars.

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.

Beauty awakens the soul to act.

Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

Pride, envy, avarice - these are the sparks have set on fire the hearts of all men.

[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. ...Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms...

He is, most of all, l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.

The secret of getting things done is to act!

The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. Where formerly life and death contended, now enduring being is made manifest-as indifferent to the accidents of time as water boiling in a pot is to the destiny of a bubble, or as the cosmos to the appearance and disappearance of a galaxy of stars.

Through me the way into the suffering city, Through me the way to the eternal pain, Through me the way that runs among the lost. Justice urged on my high artificer; My maker was divine authority, The highest wisdom, and the primal love. Before me nothing but eternal things were made, And I endure eternally. Abandon every hope, ye who enter here.

Through me you pass into the city of woe: Through me you pass into eternal pain: Through me among the people lost for aye. Justice the founder of my fabric moved: To rear me was the task of power divine, Supremest wisdom, and primeval love. Before me things create were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I shall endure. All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

All hope abandon, ye who enter here!