Man has no greater enemy than himself. I have acted contrary to my sentiments and inclination; throughout our whole lives we do what we never intended, and what we proposed to do, we leave undone.
PETRARCHIt may be only glory that we seek here, but I persuade myself that, as long as we remain here, that is right. Another glory awaits us in heaven and he who reaches there will not wish even to think of earthly fame.
More Petrarch Quotes
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Books have led some to learning and others to madness.
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To be able to say how much love, is love but little.
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For though I am a body of this earth, my firm desire is born from the stars.
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While life is in your body, you have the rein of all thoughts in your hands.
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Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
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There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.
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How quick the old woe follows a little bliss!
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Great errors seldom originate but with men of great minds.
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I would have preferred to have been born in any other time than our own.
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I have friends whose society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of all ages; distinguished in war, in council, and in letters; easy to live with, always at my command.
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And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.
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Reality is always the foe of famous names.
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It is better to will the good than to know the truth.
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I saw the tracks of angels in the earth: the beauty of heaven walking by itself on the world.
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From thought to thought, from mountain peak to mountain. Love leads me on; for I can never still My trouble on the world’s well beaten ways.
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A good death does honour to a whole life.
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And I live on, but in grief and self-contempt, Left here without the light I loved so much, In a great tempest and with shrouds unkempt.
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Suspicion is the cancer of friendship.
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A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.
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Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.
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For style beyond the genius never dares.
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Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.
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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.
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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.
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Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.
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I freeze and burn, love is bitter and sweet, my sighs are tempests and my tears are floods, I am in ecstasy and agony, I am possessed by memories of her and I am in exile from myself.
PETRARCH