Open your mind to what I shall disclose, and hold it fast within you; he who hears, but does not hold what he has heard, learns nothing.
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
My son,Here may indeed be torment, but not death.
Lost are we, and are only so far punished,That without hope we live on in desire.
Justice does not descend from its own pinnacle.
In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn wood this was, whi...
He is, most of all, l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.
From there we came outside and saw the stars
From a little spark may burst a flame.
But the stars that marked our starting fall away.We must go deeper into greater pain,for it is not permitted that we stay.
At grief so deep the tongue must wag in vain; the language of our sense and memory lacks the vocabulary of such pain.
And all the while one spirit uttered this,The other one did weep so, that, for pity,I swooned away as if I had been dying,And fell, even as a dead body falls.
This mountain’s of such sort that climbing it is hardest at the start; but as we rise, the slope grows less unkind.
There is no greater sorrow than to recall our time of joy in wretchedness.
The only answer that I give to youis doing it, he said. A just requestis to be met in silence, by the act.
The devil is not as black as he is painted.
Not foliage green, but of a fusk colour,Not branches smooth, but gnarled and intertanglednot apple-tress were there, but thorns with poison.
Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.
I make no other answer than the act, the Master said: The only fit reply to a fit request is silence and the fact. [XXIV]
I am the way into the city of woe,I am the way into eternal pain,I am the way to go among the lost.Justice caused my high architect to move,Divine omnipotence created me,The highest wisdom, and the pr...