Francesco Petrarca > Quotes

“Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.”
― Francesco Petrarca

“A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.”
― Francesco Petrarch

“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.”
― Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere: Selected Poems

“I wish to go beyond the fire that burns me.”
― Petrarch

“Books have led some to learning and others to madness.”
― Petrarch

“How do you know, poor fool? Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence'; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.”
― Francesco Petrarch, Petrarch: The Canzoniere, or Rerum vulgarium fragmenta

“She closed her eyes; and in the sweet slumber lying
her spirit tiptoed from its lodging place.
It's folly to shrink in fear, if this is dying;
for death looked lovely in her face.”
― Petrarch

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

“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.”
― Petrarch

“To be able to say how much love, is love but little.”
― Petrarch

“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.”
― Petrarch

“I cannot have a sufficiency of books. Indeed, I have more than I should... Books give utter delight: they talk with us... and are bound to us by lively and witty intimacy, and do not just insinuate themselves alone on their readers but present the names of others, and each one creates a longing for another.”
― Francesco Petrarca, Selected Letters, Volume 1

“The world’s delight is a brief dream.”
― Francesco Petrarca

“walk forwards in the radiance of the past”
― Francesco Petrarca

“Libri quosdam ad scientiam, quosdam ad insaniam deduxere. (Books have led some to knowledge and some to madness.)”
― Francesco Petrarca

“. . . The senses reign, and reason now is dead;
from one pleasing desire comes another.
Virtue, honor, beauty, gracious bearing,
sweet words have caught me in her lovely branches
in which my heart is tenderly entangled.
In thirteen twenty-seven, and precisely
at the first hour of the sixth of April
I entered the labyrinth, and I see no way out.”
― Petrarch, Petrarch: The Canzoniere, or Rerum vulgarium fragmenta

“Shame is the fruit of my vanities, and remorse, and the clearest knowledge of how the world's delight is a brief dream.”
― Petrarch

“Time is our delight and our prison. It binds all human beings together, since we all share the pleasures and burdens of memory, and we all know the anticipation of cherished goals and the dark prospect of personal mortality.”
― Francesco Petrarca, The Poetry of Petrarch

“[He who can describe how his heart is ablaze is burning on a small pyre] ~ Petrarch, Sonnet 137
(from Montaigne, On sadness)”
― Petrarch

“Nihil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio

(Nothing is more hateful to wisdom than excessive cleverness)”
― Francesco Petrarca

“And what is the use of knowing many things if, when you have learned the dimensions of heaven and earth, the measure of the seas, the courses of stars, the virtues of plants and stones, the secrets of nature, you still don’t know yourself?”
― Francesco Petrarca

“Blessed be the eyes that saw her while she lived!” 310”
― Francesco Petrarca, The Poetry of Petrarch

“Sweet is the death that taketh end by love.”
― Francesco Petrarca, Rime Di Petrarca: Verses by Petrarca

“I ate in the morning what I would digest in the evening; I swallowed as a boy what I would ruminate upon as an older man. I have thoroughly absorbed these writings, implanting them not only in my memory but in my marrow. (Quoted by Josh Foer in Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything)”
― Petrarch

“Everything else, every thought, goes fore and forever fades away into the recesses of time, and therein what remains is my soul's love for you.”
― Francesco Petrarca

“Aurum, argentum, gemmae, purpurea vestis, marmorea domus, cultus ager, pietae tabulae, phaleratus sonipes, caeteraque id genus mutam habent et superficiariam voluptatem: libri medullitus delectant, colloquuntur, consulunt, et viva quadam nobis atque arguta familiaritate junguntur.

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.”
― Petrarch

“And what good has all your reading done you? Out of all the things you have read, how much has really stayed in your soul, what roots have grown there that will, in a good time, bring forth fruit? Examine your heart carefully. If you compare the whole of what you know with what you don’t know, you will find that your knowledge is like a small stream dried up in the summer heat compared to the ocean of your ignorance. And even granted that you do know a lot, what difference does it make?”
― Francesco Petrarca

“loving friendship is able to endure everything; it refuses no burden.”
― Francesco Petrarca, Die Besteigung des Mont Ventoux

“I feed my heart with sighs, that's all it asks,
I live on tears, I think I'm born to weep;
I don't complain of that, since in my state
weeping is sweeter than you might believe.”
― Petrarch

“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.”
― Francesco Petrarch