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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
The Renaissance32 quotes
God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasions for it. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1531A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed they have good laws. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1519I've finished that chapel I was painting. The Pope is quite satisfied. — Michelangelo · 1512All 32 quotes →Middle Ages26 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 26 quotes →Age of Exploration1 quote
Those new regions which we found and explored with the fleet... We may rightly call a New World... A continent more densely peopled and abounding in animals other than our Europe or Asia or Africa; and, in addition, a climate milder than in any other region known to us. — Amerigo Vespucci · 1503