But here I can’t be still; and by the lines of this my Comedy, reader, I swear- and may my verse find favor for long years.
Dante Alighieri
you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.
Consider your origins
Here one must leave behind all hesitation; here every cowardice must meet its death.
Dante Alighieri
Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries were echoing across the starless air, so that, as soon as I set out, I wept.
Dante Alighieri
May God so let you, reader, gather fruit from what you read.
Dante Alighieri
Moving again, I tried the lonely slope- my firm foot was always the one below.
Dante Alighieri
O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?
Dante Alighieri
Silently, alone, no one escorting us, we made our way- one went before, one after- as Friars Minor when the walk together.
Dante Alighieri
The day was now departing; the dark air released the living beings of the earth from work and weariness.
Dante Alighieri
The time was the beginning of the morning; the sun was rising now in fellowship with the same stars that had escorted it when Divine Love first moved those things of beauty.
Dante Alighieri
When 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