Top 87 Quotes & Sayings by Petrarch

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.

How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!

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.

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

The aged love what is practical while impetuous youth longs only for what is dazzling.

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.

Suspicion is the cancer of friendship.

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.

Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.

Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.

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

Books have led some to learning and others to madness.

A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.

And tears are heard within the harp I touch.

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.

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?

Man has no greater enemy than himself.

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

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

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

Who naught suspects is easily deceived.

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

The end of doubt is the beginning of repose.

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.

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.

I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worst pursue.

You keep to your own ways and leave mine to me.

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

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.

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen. Other pleasures fail us or wound us while they charm, but the pen we take up rejoicing and lay down with satisfaction, for it has the power to advantage not only its lord and master, but many others as well, even though they be far away - sometimes, indeed, though they be not born for thousands of years to come.

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

Books come at my call and return when I desire them; they are never out of humor and they answer all my questions with readiness. Some present in review before me the events of past ages; others reveal to me the secrets of Nature. These teach me how to live, and those how to die; these dispel my melancholy by their mirth, and amuse me by their sallies of wit. Some there are who prepare my soul to suffer everything, to desire nothing, and to become thoroughly acquainted with itself. In a word, they open the door to all the arts and sciences.

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

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

If a hundred or a thousand people, all of the same age, of the same constitution and habits, were suddenly seized by the same illness, and one half of them were to place themselves under the care of doctors, such as they are in our time, whilst the other half entrusted themselves to Nature and to their own discretion, I have not the slightest doubt that there would be more cases of death amongst the former, and more cases of recovery among the latter.

All pleasure in the world is a passing dream.

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

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

Man has not a greater enemy than himself.

A good death does honour to a whole life.

Ruthless striving, overcomes everything.

Virtue is health, vice is sickness.

Hope is incredible to the slave of grief.

How quick the old woe follows a little bliss!

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.

The time will come when every change shall cease, This quick revolving wheel shall rest in peace: No summer then shall glow, not winter freeze; Nothing shall be to come, and nothing past, But an eternal now shall ever last.

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

Those spacious regions where our fancies roam, Pain'd by the past, expecting ills to come, In some dread moment, by the fates assign'd, Shall pass away, nor leave a rack behind; And Time's revolving wheels shall lose at last The speed that spins the future and the past: And, sovereign of an undisputed throne, Awful eternity shall reign alone.

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

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

Love is the crowning grace of humanity.

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

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

Often on earth the gentlest heart is fain To feed and banquet on another's woe.

Life in itself is short enough, but the physicians with their art, know to their amusement, how to make it still shorter.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reality is always the foe of famous names.