Home > Work > The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1) QUOTES

The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1) QUOTES

1 " A man was leaning idly against an elm. ... The man, who towered over the poet even at his slanting angle, too old for a student and too worn for a faculty member, stared at him with the familiar, insatiable gleam of the literary admirer. "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

2 " ...It is the one time Dante calls such explicit attention to the idea of contrapasso-a word for which we have no exact translation, no precise definition in English, because the word in itself is its definition... Well, my dear Longfellow, I would say countersuffering ... the notion that each sinner must be punished by continuing the damage of his own sin against him... just as these Schismatics are cut apart... "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

3 " Shakespeare brings us to know ourselves. Dante, with his dissection of all others, bids us to know one another. "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

4 " He was outwardly calm but inwardly bleeding to death. "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

5 " Though a woman tempted man to eat, my dear Longfellow," said Holmes, "you never hear of Eve having to do with his drinking, for he took to that of his own notion. "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

6 " I prefer the society of one faithful person to an association of rapid talkers, who more than anything else seek admiration from one another. "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

7 " 'Yes, we rather condemn people for eternity without the courtesy of informing them.' "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

8 " Why did nature not ask my advice about my features? "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

9 " There was still the temptation to believe the world was a mere trap for human sin. But sin, the way he saw it, was only the failure of an imperfectly made being to keep a perfect law. "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

10 " Dante's Hell is part of our world as much as part of the underworld, and shouldn't be avoided, Lowell said, but rather confronted. We sound the depths of Hell very often in this life. "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

11 " 'Do not ask what brings Dante to man but what brings man to Dante-to personally enter his sphere, though it is forever severe and unforgiving.' "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

12 " 'Till America has learned to love literature not as an amusement, not as a mere doggerel to memorize in a college room, but for its humanizing and ennobling energy, my dear reverend president, she will not have succeeded in that high sense which alone makes a nation out of a people. That which raises it from a dead name to a living power.' "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

13 " Sepa que cuando soy amigo de un hombre lo soy para siempre, y es muy difícil hacerme volver atrás. Y aunque un hombre pueda gozar siendo mi enemigo, no puede convertirme a mí en el suyo mientras yo no quiera. Buenas tardes. "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

14 " 'Pity without rigor would be cowardly egotism, mere sentimentality.' "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

15 " On the trees were no longer only leaves but brown fruits, on the bushes no longer blossoms but clusters of red berries. And the wind had a rough manliness in its voice - the tone not of a lover but of a husband. "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

16 " These people build as if they were immortal and eat as if they were to die instantly. "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

17 " You have never fought for anything in your life. You write poems and articles about slavery and the murder of Indians and hope something will change. You fight what does not come near your door, professors. You've inherited everything in your lives and do not know what it is to cry for your bread! Well, with what other expectations did I come to this country? What should I complain of? The greatest bard had no home but exile. One day to come, perhaps, I shall walk on my own shores again, one more with true friends, before I leave this earth. "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

18 " Remember that only when past genius is transmitted into a present power shall we meet the first truly american poet. And somewhere, born to the streets rather than the athenaeum, we will come upon the first true reader. The spirit of the american is suspected to be timid, imitative, tame -- the scholar decent, indolent, complaisant. The mind of our country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. Without action, the scholar is not yet man. Ideas must work through the bones and arms of good men or they are no better than dreams. "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

19 " The force of Dante's poetry resonated most in those who did not confess the Catholic faith, for believers would inevitably have quibbles with Dante's theology. But for those most distant theologically, Dante's faith was so perfect, so unyielding, that a reader found himself compelled by the poetry to take it all to heart. "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)

20 " Survival here means simply an incomplete death, not a partial life -- to be trapped in a gap between the living and the dead. If I had a thousand tongues, I would not try to describe the agony! "

― Matthew Pearl , The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)