“I hate and love. You ask, perhaps, how can that be? I know not, but I feel the agony.”

Give up wanting to deserve any thanks from anyone, or thinking anybody can be grateful.

Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then a thousand more.

Now Spring restores the balmy heat, now Zephyr’s sweet breezes calm the rage of the equinoctial sky.

I hate and I love, and who can tell me why?

So a maiden, whilst she remains untouched, so long is she dear to her own; when she has lost her chaste flower with sullied body, she remains neither lovely to boys nor dear to girls.

For the godly poet must be chaste himself, but there is no need for his verses to be so.

Who now travels that dark path from whose bourne they say no one returns. [Lat., Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum Illue unde negant redire quemquam.]

I write of youth, of love, and have access by these to sing of cleanly wantonness.

But you shall not escape my iambics.

My mind’s sunk so low, Claudia, because of you, wrecked itself on your account so bad already, that I couldn’t like you if you were the best of women, -or stop loving you, no matter what you do.

To whom do I give my new elegant little book? Cui dono lepidum novum libellum?

We see not our own backs.

I can imagine no greater misfortune for a cultured people than to see in the hands of the rulers not only the civil, but also the religious power.

I hate and I love. And if you ask me how, I do not know: I only feel it, and I am torn in two.

I hate and love. And why, perhaps you’ll ask. I don’t know: but I feel, and I’m tormented.

What women say to lovers, you’ll agree, One writes on running water or on air.

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

It’s been agony but I couldn’t have done it any other way.

The problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat

Good writing … involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.

When men talk about the agony of being men, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of self-pity.

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.

To save a man and thereby to spare a father’s agony and a mother’s feelings is not to do a noble deed, it is but an act of humanity.

Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.