Top 87 Quotes & Sayings by Petrarch - Page 2

Wanting is not enough, long and you attain it.

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.

For virtue only finds eternal Fame.

Who over-refines his argument brings himself to grief

I have taken pride in others, never in myself.

Great errors seldom originate but with men of great minds.

Books never pall on me. They discourse with us, they take counsel with us, and are united to us by a certain living chatty familiarity. And not only does each book inspire the sense that it belongs to its readers, but it also suggests the name of others, and one begets the desire of the other.

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

My flowery and green age was passing away, and I feeling a chill in the fires had been wasting my heart, for I was drawing near the hillside above the grave.

For style beyond the genius never dares.

I had got this far, and was thinking of what to say next, and as my habit is, I was pricking the paper idly with my pen. And I thought how, between one dip of the pen and the next, time goes on, and I hurry, drive myself, and speed toward death. We are always dying. I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or stop their ears, they are all dying.

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!

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

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

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

He loves but lightly who his love can tell.

And I live on, but in grief and self-contempt, Left here without the light I loved so much, In a great tempest and with shrouds unkempt.

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.

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

The greater I am, the greater shall be my efforts.

In my younger days I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair - my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did.

Whyle I was abowte to chaunge myn olde lyff-- What sorowe I suffred, dyseese, angre and stryff, Cracchynge myn here, my chekys all totare, Wrythynge my fyngres for angwysshe and care, Watrynge the erthe with my byttre salte teres That the crye of my syghes ascended to Goddys eres, My knees with myn handys grasped togedyre soore, And yitt I stode the same man I was afore Tyl a depe profounde remembraunce att the laste Hadd all my wrecchednesse afore myn eyn caste

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.

For death betimes is comfort, not dismay, and who can rightly die needs no delay.

An equal doom clipp'd Time's blest wings of peace.

Death had his grudge against me, and he got up in the way, like an armed robber, with a pike in his hand.

Go, grieving rimes of mine, to that hard stone Whereunder lies my darling, lies my dear, And cry to her to speak from heaven's sphere.