Quotes by Petrarch

“Books have led some to learning and others to madness, when they swallow more than they can digest.”

“How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!”

“It is better to will the good than to know the truth.”

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

“Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.”

“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.”

“Here I have established my Rome, my Athens, and my spiritual fatherland; here I gather all the friends I now have or did have, not only those ... who have lived with me, but also those who died man...”

“O thou of all knowledge and of all wisdom, true and only God, thou giver of true glory, Lord of all virtue, supreme Saviour Jesus, see that supplicant and in my soul genuflected before thee I since...”

“Thou, before whom all my desires and sighs are manifest, thou knowest, o Lord, that from letters, to which I soberly aspired, I asked nothing but to become virtuous, and that this cannot be obtaine...”

“Il suo Salterio vorrei di giorno aver sempre in mano e sotto gli occhi, di notte e sul punto di morte sotto il capo, stimando questo per me cagione di gloria non meno che per il massimo dei filosof...”

“Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suonodi quei sospiri ond'io nudriva 'l corein sul mio primo giovenile errorequand'era in parte altr'uom da quel ch'i' sono.”

“Et del mio vaneggiar vergogna è 'l frutto,e 'l pentersi, e 'l conoscer chiaramenteche quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno.”

“Ché i be' vostr'occhi, donna, mi legaro.”

“Who overrefines his argument brings himself to grief.”

“Tempo da travagliare è quanto è 'l giorno.”

“Ma pur sí aspre vie né sí selvaggecercar non so ch'Amor non venga sempreragionando con meco, et io co llui.”

“Ahi nova gente oltra misura altera,irreverente a tanta et a tal madre!”