Francesco Petrarca QUOTES

1 " 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. "

― Francesco Petrarca , Canzoniere: Selected Poems

2 " Learning is my sole delight. "

― Francesco Petrarca

3 " To be able to say how much love, is love but little. "

― Francesco Petrarca

4 " Books have led some to learning and others to madness. "

― Francesco Petrarca

5 " Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together. "

― Francesco Petrarca

6 " I feed my heart with sighs, that's all it asks,
I live on tears, I think I'm born to weep;
I don't complain of that, since in my state
weeping is sweeter than you might believe. "

― Francesco Petrarca

7 " She closed her eyes; and in the sweet slumber lying
her spirit tiptoed from its lodging place.
It's folly to shrink in fear, if this is dying;
for death looked lovely in her face. "

― Francesco Petrarca

8 " Your Homer is here with me; mute or rather in fact deaf am I, in front of him. But I am happy to gaze upon him and often hug him and, sighing, say, 'Great man, how I would love to hear you! "

― Francesco Petrarca

9 " Among the many subjects which interested me, I dwelt especially upon antiquity, for our own age has always repelled me, so that, had it not been for the love of those dear to me, I should have preferred to place myself in spirit in other ages, and consequently I delighted in history. "

― Francesco Petrarca

10 " [He who can describe how his heart is ablaze is burning on a small pyre] ~ Petrarch, Sonnet 137
(from Montaigne, On sadness) "

― Francesco Petrarca

11 " Laura, illustrious through her own virtues, and long famed through my verses, first appeared to my eyes in my youth, in the year of our Lord 1327, on the sixth day of April, in the church of St. Clare in Avignon, at matins; and in the same city, also on the sixth day of April, at the same first hour, but in the year 1348, the light of her life was withdrawn from the light of day, while I, as it chanced, was in Verona, unaware of my fate... "

― Francesco Petrarca

12 " Vos vestros servate, meos mihi linquite mores. "

― Francesco Petrarca

13 " ...never would I trade for some new shape
that laurel I was first, in whose sweet shade
all other pleasures vanish in my heart. "

― Francesco Petrarca , Canzoniere

14 " A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires. "

― Francesco Petrarca

15 " I wish to go beyond the fire that burns me. "

― Francesco Petrarca

16 " How do you know, poor fool? Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence'; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe. "

― Francesco Petrarca , Canzoniere

17 " Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us. "

― Francesco Petrarca

18 " Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds, and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy. "

― Francesco Petrarca

19 " The world’s delight is a brief dream. "

― Francesco Petrarca

20 " 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. "

― Francesco Petrarca

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