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Dante Alighieri24 quotes
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. — Dante Alighieri · 1321Consider your origin;
you were not born to live like brutes,
but to follow virtue and knowledge. — Dante Alighieri · 1321When I had journeyed half of our life's way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray. — Dante Alighieri · 1321In that part of the book of my memory, before which very little is written, there is a heading that reads "Here begins a new life". — Dante Alighieri · 1294Haste denies all acts their dignity. — Dante Alighieri · 1321Thence we came forth to see the stars again. — Dante Alighieri · 1321All 24 quotes →Boethius9 quotes
O happy race of mortals, if your hearts are ruled, as is the universe, by Love! — Boethius · 523If you expect a physician to help you, you must lay bare your wound. — Boethius · 523Who hath so entire happiness that he is not in some part offended with the condition of his estate? — Boethius · 524Nothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content. — Boethius · 523Wherefore not without cause has one of your own followers asked, "If God is, whence come evil things? If He is not, whence come good?" — Boethius · 523You can take comfort in the likelihood that what is now making you miserable will also pass away. — Boethius · 523All 9 quotes →St. Thomas Aquinas6 quotes
Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a prime mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God. — St. Thomas Aquinas · 1265If all evil were prevented, much good would be absent from the universe. A lion would cease to live, if there were no slaying of animals; and there would be no patience of martyrs if there were no tyrannical persecution. — St. Thomas Aquinas · 1265Whatever we do or suffer for a friend is pleasant, because love is the principal cause of pleasure. — St. Thomas Aquinas · 1265Everything I have written seems like straw by comparison with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me. — St. Thomas Aquinas · 1273Three things are necessary for man to be saved: knowledge of what is to be believed, knowledge of what is to be desired, and knowledge of what is to be done. — St. Thomas Aquinas · 1273Law: an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community. — St. Thomas Aquinas · 1273Maimonides5 quotes
In the realm of Nature there is nothing purposeless, trivial, or unnecessary. — Maimonides · 1190Astrology is a disease, not a science. — Maimonides · 1195The foundation of our faith is the belief that God created the Universe from nothing; that time did not exist previously, but was created. — Maimonides · 1190When I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing then thousand fools-I prefer to address myself to the man. — Maimonides · 1190The basic tenets of our Torah and its fundamental principles are thirteen in number: The first fundamental principle is the existence of the Creator. There is a being who exists in the most perfect mode of existence, and he is the cause of he existence of all other beings. — Maimonides · 1168Thomas a Kempis4 quotes
They consider the deed but God weighs the motive. — Thomas a Kempis · 1418For man proposes, but God disposes. — Thomas a Kempis · 1427Oh how quickly the glory of the world passes away! — Thomas a Kempis · 1427Of the two evils the lesser is always to be chosen. — Thomas a Kempis · 1427Geoffrey Chaucer3 quotes
He loved chivalrie,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie. — Geoffrey Chaucer · 1400And what is better than wisdom? Woman. And what is better than a good woman? Nothing. — Geoffrey Chaucer · 1400Love is a thing as any spirit free. — Geoffrey Chaucer · 1400Sir Thomas Mallory3 quotes
The joy of love is too short, and the sorrow thereof, and what cometh thereof, dureth over long. — Sir Thomas Mallory · 1485Who so pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England. — Sir Thomas Mallory · 1485The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit. — Sir Thomas Mallory · 1485Venerable Bede3 quotes
The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail ahead; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. — Venerable Bede · 731No reptiles are found there, and no snake can live there; for, though often carried thither out of Britain, as soon as the ship comes near the shore, and the scent of the air reaches them, they die. — Venerable Bede · 731If history records good things of good men, the thoughtful hearer is encouraged to imitate what is good. — Venerable Bede · 731Charles d'Orleans2 quotes
I am dying of thirst by the side of the fountain. — Charles d'Orleans · 1440The season has shed its mantle of wind and chill and rain. — Charles d'Orleans · 1440Giovanni Boccaccio2 quotes
They dug for each graveyard a huge trench, in which they laid the corpses as they arrived by hundreds at a time, piling them up tier upon tier as merchandise is stowed in a ship. — Giovanni Boccaccio · 1353In this extremity of our city's suffering and tribulation the revered authority of laws, human and divine, was abased and all but totally dissolved, for lack of those who should have administered and enforced them, most of whom, like the rest of the citizens, were either dead or sick, or so hard pressed for servants that they were unable to execute any office; whereby every man was free to do what was right in his own eyes. — Giovanni Boccaccio · 1353Heloise2 quotes
God knows I never sought anything in you except yourself; I wanted simply you, nothing of yours. — Heloise · 1132My heart was not in me but with you, and now, even more, if it is not with you it is nowhere. — Heloise · 1132Julian of Norwich2 quotes
He said not "Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shall not be travailed, thou shalt not be diseased"; but he said, "Thou shalt not be overcome." — Julian of Norwich · 1413All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. — Julian of Norwich · 1395Peter Abelard2 quotes
For we do not easily expect evil of those whom we love most. — Peter Abelard · 1132O what their joy and glory must be,
Those endless sabbaths the blessed ones see! — Peter Abelard · 1142Alain de Lille1 quote
Do not hold as gold all that shines as gold. — Alain de Lille · 1202Alcuin of York1 quote
And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness. — Alcuin of York · 800Arnaud Amalric1 quote
Kill them all; for the Lord knoweth them that are His. — Arnaud Amalric · 1209Bernard of Chartres1 quote
We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size. — Bernard of Chartres · 1159Bernard of Clairvaux1 quote
I have freed my soul. — Bernard of Clairvaux · 1152Christine de Pizan1 quote
Where true love is, it showeth; it will not feign. — Christine de Pizan · 1399Eleazar of Worms1 quote
The highest sacrifice is a broken and contrite heart; the highest wisdom is that which is found in the Torah; the noblest of all ornaments is modesty; and the most beautiful thing that man can do, is to forgive a wrong. — Eleazar of Worms · 1200Leon Battista Alberti1 quote
Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men present, as friendship is said to do, but moreover makes the dead seem almost alive. — Leon Battista Alberti · 1435Saint Anselm1 quote
God is that, the greater than which cannot be conceived. — Saint Anselm · 1078St. Bernard of Clairvaux1 quote
You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters. — St. Bernard of Clairvaux · 1147St. Francis of Assisi1 quote
Praised be You, my Lord, with all your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,
Who is the day and through whom You give us light. — St. Francis of Assisi · 1226St. John of Damascus1 quote
God is a sea of infinite substance. — St. John of Damascus · 749Vladimir the Great1 quote
It is the Russians' joy to drink; we cannot do without it. — Vladimir the Great · 1113Walther von der Vogelweide1 quote
Now the summer came to pass
And flowers through the grass
Joyously sprang,
While all the tribes of birds sang. — Walther von der Vogelweide · 1230