The Divine Comedy

By Dante Alighieri QUOTATION: Abandon all hope, you who enter here!
ATTRIBUTION: Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet. “Inferno,” cto. 3, l. 9, The Divine Comedy (1321).

QUOTATION: Honor the greatest poet.
ATTRIBUTION: Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet. “The Inferno,” cto. 4, The Divine Comedy.

QUOTATION: Consider your breed;
you were not made to live like beasts,
but to follow virtue and knowledge.
ATTRIBUTION: Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet. Ulysses, in “The Inferno,” cto. 18, The Divine Comedy (completed 1321).

QUOTATION: I wept not, so to stone within I grew.
ATTRIBUTION: Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet. “Inferno,” cto. 33, l. 49, The Divine Comedy (1321).

QUOTATION: This miserable state is borne by the wretched souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise.
ATTRIBUTION: Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet. “Inferno,” cto. 3, l. 34, The Divine Comedy (1321).

QUOTATION: The infernal storm, eternal in its rage, sweeps and drives the spirits with its blast; it whirls them, lashing them with punishment. When they are swept back past their place of judgment then come the shrieks, laments, and anguished cries; there they blaspheme God’s almighty power.
ATTRIBUTION: Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet. “Inferno,” cto. 5, l. 31-6, The Divine Comedy (c. 1307-1321), trans. by Mark Musa (1971).

QUOTATION: Let us not speak of them; but look, and pass on.
ATTRIBUTION: Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet. “Inferno,” cto. 3, l. 51, The Divine Comedy (1321).

QUOTATION: Midway along the journey of our life [Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita] I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path.
ATTRIBUTION: Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet. “Inferno,” cto. 1, l. 1-3, The Divine Comedy (c. 1307-1321), trans. by Mark Musa (1971).

QUOTATION: There is no greater sorrow than to recall a happy time in the midst of wretchedness.
ATTRIBUTION: Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet. “Inferno,” cto. 5, l. 121-3, The Divine Comedy (1321).

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