Virgil Quotes

“I made response to him with bashful forehead. ‘Oh, of the other poets honor and light, Avail me the long study and great love That have impelled me to explore thy volume! Thou art my master, and my author thou, Thou art alone the one from whom I took The beautiful style that has done honor to me.‘”

″‘…I think and judge it for the best Thou follow me, and I will be thy guide, And lead thee hence through the eternal place, Where thou shalt here the desperate lamentations, Shalt see the ancient spirits disconsolate, Who cry out each one for the second death…‘”

“They turned to me with signs of salutation, And on beholding this, my Master smiled; And more of honor still, much more, they did me, In that they made me one of their own band; So that the sixth was I, ‘mid so much wit.”

“My Leader on a sudden seized me up, Even as a mother who by noise is wakened, And close beside her sees the enkindled flames, Who takes her son, and flies, and does not stop, Having more care of him than of herself…”

″‘The anguish of the people Who are below here in my face depicts That pity which for terror thou has taken.‘”

″‘Now I will have thee know, the other time I here descended to the nether Hell, This precipice had not yet fallen down.‘”

″‘Art thou, too, of the other fools? Here pity lives when it is wholly dead; Who is a greater reprobate than he Who feels compassion at the doom divine?‘”

“Without hope we live in desire.”

“Have you forgotten, then, the words with which your Ethics treats of those three dispositions that strike at Heaven’s will: incontinence and malice and mad bestiality?”

“Your art would follow nature, just as a pupil imitates his master; ... your art is almost God’s grandchild.”

“There above How many now hold themselves mighty kings Who here like swine shall wallow in the mire, Leaving behind them horrible dispraise!”

“This miserable fate Suffer the wretched souls of those, who liv’d Without or praise or blame, with that ill band Of angels mix’d, who nor rebellious prov’d Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves Were only.”

“Thy soul is by vile fear assail’d, which oft So overcasts a man, that he recoils From noblest resolution, like a beast At some false semblance in the twilight gloom.”

“Let not thy fear Harm thee, for power in him, be sure, is none To hinder down this rock thy safe descent.”

“These of death No hope may entertain: and their blind life So meanly passes, that all other lots They envy. Fame of them the world hath none, Nor suffers; mercy and justice scorn them both. Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by.”

“Heaven’s justice goads them on, that fear Is turn’d into desire.”

“And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring, From which such copious floods of eloquence Have issued?”

“Oh, how long Me seems it, ere the promis’d help arrive!”

“Though ne’er to true perfection may arrive This race accurs’d, yet nearer then than now They shall approach it.”

“Eternal fire, That inward burns, shows them with ruddy flame Illum’d.”

“Not all the gold, that is beneath the moon, Or ever hath been, of these toil-worn souls Might purchase rest for one.”