Best 76 quotes of Petrarch on MyQuotes

A good death does honour to a whole life.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Books have led some to learning and others to madness.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

For style beyond the genius never dares.

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

For virtue only finds eternal Fame.

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.

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.

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.

Great errors seldom originate but with men of great minds.

He loves but lightly who his love can tell.

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!

Hope is incredible to the slave of grief.

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

How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!

How quick the old woe follows a little bliss!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Love is the crowning grace of humanity.

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.

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

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

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

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

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