A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.
PETRARCHA short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.
PETRARCHMere elegance of language can produce at best but an empty renown.
PETRARCHI rejoiced in my progress, mourned my weaknesses, and commiserated the universal instability of human conduct.
PETRARCHDo 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?
PETRARCHAnd 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.
PETRARCHOften on earth the gentlest heart is fain To feed and banquet on another’s woe.
PETRARCHIt is better to will the good than to know the truth.
PETRARCHLove 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.
PETRARCHMan 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.
PETRARCHRarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
PETRARCHIt is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.
PETRARCHSameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.
PETRARCHPerhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.
PETRARCHFor though I am a body of this earth, my firm desire is born from the stars.
PETRARCHGreat errors seldom originate but with men of great minds.
PETRARCHFrom 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.
PETRARCH