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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 →Niccolo Machiavelli15 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 · 1532Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532It is much safer to be feared than loved. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1527All 15 quotes →Leonardo da Vinci8 quotes
Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1519Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1519Human subtlety... Will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1519Man and animal are merely a passage and channel for food, a tomb for other animals, a haven for the dead, giving life by the death of others, a coffer full of corruption. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1508Perspective is the bridle and rudder of painting. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1519Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1568All 8 quotes →Michelangelo5 quotes
I've finished that chapel I was painting. The Pope is quite satisfied. — Michelangelo · 1512The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows. — Michelangelo · 1525The marble not yet carved can hold the form
Of every thought the greatest artist has. — Michelangelo · 1564If it be true that any beautiful thing raises the pure and just desire of man from earth to God, the eternal fount of all, such I believe my love. — Michelangelo · 1525Painting and sculpture, hard work and fair dealing have been my ruin and things go continually from bad to worse. It would have been better had I been put to making matches in my youth than to be in such a fret! — Michelangelo · 1542Galileo Galilei3 quotes
Philosophy is written in this grand book-I mean the universe-which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth. — Galileo Galilei · 1623Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty. — Galileo Galilei · 1638In disputes about natural phenomena one must begin not with the authority of Scriptural passage but with sensory experience and necessary demonstrations. For the Holy Scripture and nature derive equally from the Godhead, the former as the dictation of the Holy Spirit and the latter as the most obedient executrix of God's orders. — Galileo Galilei · 1615Petrarch3 quotes
We are continually dying; I while I am writing these words, you while you are reading them, others when they hear them or fail to hear them. I shall be dying when you read this, you die while I write, we both are dying, we all are dying, we are dying forever. — Petrarch · 1360Today I climbed the highest mountain in this region, which is not improperly called Ventosus (Windy). The only motive for my ascent was the wish to see what so great a height had to offer. — Petrarch · 1336O you who hear within these scattered verses
The sound of sighs with which I fed my heart
In my first errant youthful days when I
In part was not the man I am today. — Petrarch · 1352Giovanni 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 · 1353Agnolo di Tura del Grosso1 quote
There was no one who wept for any death, for all awaited death. — Agnolo di Tura del GrossoAmerigo Vespucci1 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 · 1503Galeazzo Ciano1 quote
As always, victory will have a hundred fathers, but defeat will never be acknowledged by anyone at all. — Galeazzo Ciano · 1942Giorgio Vasari1 quote
The contours of its legs are extremely beautiful, along with the splendid articulations and grace of its flanks, a sweeter and more graceful pose has never been seen that could equal it, nor have feet, hands, and a head ever been produced which so well match all the other parts of the body in skill of workmanship or design. To be sure, anyone who sees the statue need not be concerned with seeing any other piece of sculpture done in our times or in any other period by any other artist. — Giorgio Vasari · 1550Lorenzo de Medici1 quote
How beautiful is youth,
that is always slipping away!
Whoever wants to be happy, let him be so:
of tomorrow there's no knowing. — Lorenzo de Medici · 1490Roberto Calasso1 quote
A life in which the gods are not invited is not worth living. It will be quieter, but there won't be any stories. — Roberto Calasso · 1988