Petrarch

Francesco Petrarca or Petrarch (July 20, 1304 – July 19, 1374) was an Italian scholar, poet, and early humanist. Petrarch and Dante are considered the fathers of the Renaissance.

Sourced

• Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
  • De Remedies, Book II

• Books have led some to learning and others to madness, when they swallow more than they can digest.
  • quoted in "Lifetime speaker's encyclopedia" - Page 75 by Jacob Morton Braude - Quotations - 1962

• It is better to will the good than to know the truth.
  • quoted in "The Renaissance: Essays in Interpretation" - Page 107 by André Chastel - History - 1982

• There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen. Other pleasures fail us or wound, us while they charm, but the pen we take up rejoicing and lay down with satisfaction, for it has the power to advantage not only its lord and master, but many others as well, even though they be far away- sometimes, indeed, though they be not born for thousands of years to come. I believe I speak but the strict truth when I claim that as there is none among earthly delights more noble than literature, so there is none so lasting, none gentler, or more faithful; there is none which accompanies its possessor through the vicissitudes of life at so small a cost of effort or anxiety.
  • quoted in "Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters" - Page 426 by Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, Henry Winchester Rolfe, James Harvey Robinson - Renaissance - 1898

• Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.
  • quoted in "The Little Giant Encyclopedia of Inspirational Quotes" - Page 446 by Wendy Toliver - Self-Help - 2005

To Laura in Life

• Who overrefines his argument brings himself to grief.
  • Canzone 11

• A good death does honor to a whole life.
  • Canzone 16

• To be able to say how much you love is to love but little.
  • Canzone 37

Unsourced

• A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.

• Do you suppose there is any living man so unreasonable that if he found himself stricken with a dangerous ailment he would not anxiously desire to regain the blessing of health?

• Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.

• How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance.

• How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!

• It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.

• Love is the crowning grace of humanity.

• Man has no greater enemy than himself.

• Often have I wondered with much curiosity as to our coming into this world and what will follow our departure.

• Suspicion is the cancer of friendship.

• The aged love what is practical while impetuous youth longs only for what is dazzling.

• To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost every one is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds.

• What name to call thee by, O virgin fair, I know not, for thy looks are not of earth And more than mortal seems thy countenances.

• Who naught suspects is easily deceived.