Petrarch Quotes

“Tacitus appears to have been as great an enthusiast as Petrarch for the revival of the republic and universal empire. He has exerted the vengeance of history upon the emperors, but has veiled the conspiracies against them, and the incorrigible corruption of the people which probably provoked their most atrocious cruelties. Tyranny can scarcely be practised upon a virtuous and wise people.”
― John Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Adams Papers)

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

“You can quiz me on Petrarch, Medea, Shakespeare or Dante, I know them all, and I’m sorry, but they’ve all gone wrong. Dumb glorified men, writing words about love and life as if they knew. As far as I’m concerned, they didn’t make it out alive either, so I’m sure as hell not going to go to them for advice.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

“Laura, illustrious through her own virtues, and long famed through my verses, first appeared to my eyes in my youth, in the year of our Lord 1327, on the sixth day of April, in the church of St. Clare in Avignon, at matins; and in the same city, also on the sixth day of April, at the same first hour, but in the year 1348, the light of her life was withdrawn from the light of day, while I, as it chanced, was in Verona, unaware of my fate...”
― Francesco Petrarca

“My galley, charged with forgetfulness,
Thorough sharp seas in winter nights doth pass
'Tween rock and rock; and eke mine enemy, alas,
That is my lord, steereth with cruelness;
And every oar a thought in readiness,
As though that death were light in such a case.
An endless wind doth tear the sail apace
Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness.
A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain,
Hath done the weared cords great hinderance;
Wreathed with error and eke with ignorance.
The stars be hid that led me to this pain.
Drowned is reason that should me consort,
And I remain despairing of the port.”
― Thomas Wyatt

““Vos vestros servate, meos mihi linquite mores.””
― Petrarch

“Could Beatrice have written like Dante,
or Laura have glorified love's pain?
I set the style for women's speech.
God help me shut them up again!”
― Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“Petrarch warned that "what you won, a thousand will wrest from you here and there; what you lose, no one will give back to you." Even when a winner, he reasoned, the gambler did not truly profit.”
― David G. Schwartz, Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling

“Petrarch declared that all money was unstable, whirling away "possibly due to the roundness of the coins," further elaborating that money won by gambling was the least stable of all.”
― David G. Schwartz, Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling

“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.”
― David Young

“Eventually, through death and redefinition, his love and fidelity reward him, training the tormented poet to an understanding of heavenly love and heavenly beauty, values which Laura is able to represent fully only after she has left the earth.”
― David Young, Canzoniere