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“For when your longings center on things such
That sharing them apportions less to each,
Then envy stirs the bellows of your sighs.

But if the love within the Highest Sphere
Should turn your longings heavenward, the fear
Inhabiting your breast would disappear;

For there, the more there are who would say ‘ours’,
So much the greater is the good possessed
By each…”

(Purgatorio XV)

“Here it is to be considered with this true example how much more a humane act full of charity is sometimes able to do in the spirits of men than a ferocious and violent act, and that often those provinces that arms, warlike instruments, and every other human force have not been able to open have been opened by one example of humanity and of mercy.”

Dante somehow conceived of films more than 600 years before their invention.

Each level of Purgatory contains exemplars of the virtues to which penitents aspire, drawn from history/Biblical narrative, and displayed to the Pilgrim as photorealistic, moving and talking images projected on smooth white marble. His senses are confounded in what can only be described as the first instance of ‘movie magic’

“Hence it arises that a republic has greater life and good fortune longer than a principality, for it can accommodate itself better than one prince can to the diversity of the times through the diversity of the citizens that are in it. For a man who is accustomed to proceed in one mode never changes…and when the times change not in conformity with his mode, he is ruined. [] Two things are causes why we are unable

An aspect of Dante that I love is his choice of similes. They are so apt, and bear such scrutiny within the broader themes of the poem, as only the finest poets can achieve. Here, penitent souls are rebuked for lingering to hear an earthly song (requested by the hapless, blundering Pilgrim) rather than starting on their climb toward the gates of Purgatory:

“Just as, whenever mists begin to thin,
When, gradually, vision finds the form
That in the vapor-thickened air was hidden,
So I pierced through the dense and darkened fog;
As I drew always nearer to the shore,
My error fled from me, my terror grew.”

XXXI.34-39

700 years later, Dante is still capable of shocking the reader. Each time I read it, I’m blown away by Canto XXV, which reads like the script for a David Cronenberg film. The grotesque fusion of condemned thieves with serpents (representing their sneaking deceit in life) is straight out of ‘The Fly’. It is testament to Dante’s extraordinary fantastical abilities — this really is the first work of Sci-Fi!

“O, it is excellent
To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.”
(II.ii)

“Our doubt are traitors,
And makes us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.”
(I.iv)

Saw this last night at the Old Globe and decided to finally read it while the performance is fresh in my mind

“When gain is seen in the things that are put before the people, even though there is loss concealed underneath, and when it appears spirited, even though there is the ruin of the republic concealed underneath, it will always be easy to persuade the multitude of it; and likewise it may always be difficult to persuade [the public]of policies if either cowardice or loss might appear, even though safety and gain might

“Men are wont to worry in evil and to become bored with good, and from both of these two passions the same effects arise. For whenever engaging in combat through necessity is taken from men, they engage in combat through ambition, which is so powerful in human breasts that it never abandons them at whatever rank they rise to. The cause is that nature has created men so that they are able to desire everything and

“It was not the revival of antiquity alone, but its union with the genius of the Italian people, which achieved the [Renaissance] conquest of the western world. The amount of independence which the national spirit maintained in this union varied according to circumstances. In the modern Latin literature of the period, it is very small, while in the visual arts as well as in other spheres, it is remarkably great;

“Through tattered clothes small vices do appear;
Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it in rags, a Pygmy’s straw does pierce it.”
(IV.vi)


These words certainly resonate in our current era…

“‘‘Tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind.”
(IV.i)

Reading this again for the first time in ~15 years. Long my favorite play of Shakespeare and so far it holds up to that judgement.

“For as good customs have need of laws to maintain themselves, so laws have need of good customs so as to be observed.”

“This makes new laws insufficient because the orders, which remain fixed, corrupt them.”

“For a prudent individual knows many goods that do not have in themselves evident reasons with which one can persuade others. This wise men who wish to take away this difficulty have recourse to God.”

“For we see men, in those activities that carry them toward the goal they all share, which is the acquisition of glory and riches, proceed differently. One acts with caution, while another is headstrong; one is violent, while another relies on skill; one is patient, while another is the opposite: and any one of them, despite these differences in their methods, may achieve his objective. One also sees that of two

“Men are less nervous of offending someone who makes himself lovable than someone who makes himself frightening. For love attaches men by ties of obligation, which, since men are wicked, they break whenever their interests are at stake. But fear restrains men because they are afraid of punishment, and this fear never leaves them. Still, a ruler should make himself feared in such a way that, if he does not inspire

“It is in men’s nature to feel as obliged by the good they do to others, as by the good others do to them.”

“For if the elite fear they will be unable to control the populace, they begin to build up the reputation of one of their own, and they make him sole ruler in order to be able, under his protection, to achieve their objectives. The populace, on the other hand, if they fear they are going to be crushed by the elite, build up the reputation of one of their number and make him sole ruler in order that his authority

“Each individual protested inwardly against despotism but was disposed to make tolerable or profitable terms with it rather than to combine with others for its destruction. Things must have been [especially bad]before the citizens united to destroy or expel the ruling house. They knew in most cases only too well that this would but mean a change of masters. The star of the republics was certainly on the decline.”

“When the [religion-defined] Ottoman millet system was still functioning in accordance with its own inner logic, ethnic solidarities did not define basic identity nor did they determine ultimate allegiance. The people whom we call, and who now call themselves, Turks and Arabs, did not describe themselves by those names until fairly modern times. [ ] It was only in modern times, under the impact of European ideas

“The rise of mercantilism in the producer-oriented West helped European trading companies, and the states that protected and encouraged them, to achieve a level of commercial organization and a concentration of economic energies unknown and unparalleled in the East, where—as a matter of fact more than of theory—‘market forces’ operated without serious restrictions. The Western trading corporation, with the

From the speech of Syracusan admiral Gylippus before a decisive naval battle vs. Athens:

“When men are once checked in what they consider their special excellence, their whole opinion of themselves suffers more than if they had not at first believed in their superiority, the unexpected shock to their pride causing them to give way more than their real strength warrants.”

Alcibiades:
“Love of country is what I do not feel when I am wronged, but what I felt when secure in my rights as a citizen. I do not consider that I am now attacking a country that is still mine; I am rather trying to recover one that is mine no longer; and the true lover of his country is not he who consents to lose it unjustly…but he who longs for it so much that he will go to all lengths to recover it.”

“We should remember that we are only now enjoying some respite from a great pestilence and from war, to the no small benefit of our estates and persons, and that it is right to employ these at home on our own behalf, instead of using them on behalf of these exiles whose interest is to lie as well as they can, who do nothing but talk themselves and leave the danger to others,

“Many stories are told in the Arabic chronicles of how, when the Arabs came as conquerors, they tried to take over the government but couldn’t, because nobody could read the accounts except the accountants, and no one could deal with correspondence except the clerks in the office. And so, the stories relate, perforce the Arabs had to give way, and though they were the unchallenged political and military masters

“The titulature of sovereignty in Islam, unlike that of Christendom, does not normally make use of territorial or ethnic designations. There are no equivalents to the kings of England, of France, of Spain, or other realms in the West. During the great wars between the sultan of Turkey and the shah of Iran in the 16th century, these were titles which each applied to the other to belittle him, and never to himself.