87 Petrarch Quotes

Francesco Petrarch was a popular Italian scholar and poet, and the earliest humanist in Renaissance Italy.

Francesco Petrarch is renowned for his 'Canzoniere', a compendium of praise poems. They are about a woman named Laura whom the speaker loves but cannot be with all through his existence.

Petrarch's works on English literature survived at least until the nineteenth century and can be discovered in the writings of several famous English poets, including Sir Thomas Wyatt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and many Renaissance writers. He inspired a generation of classical writers and has fans even centuries after his passing who still praise him.

Petrarch is most famous for 'Canzoniere', which is the collection of Vernacular Poetry of Laura. In the residence of the exiled papal court, where an Italian lawyer could perhaps expect to find a job. The Italian scholar grew passionate and began his studies in Carpentras, France, and was sent to Montpellier, France, at his father's request, to study law. He then returned to Italy with his younger brother Gherardo to proceed with his education at the University of Bologna. The idea of the dark ages was conceived by Petrarch.

Humanity has to be given great consideration in human existence. The following are some quotes from Petrarch that show how important humanity is.

"There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen."

"It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other."

"Do 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?"

"It is better to will the good than to know the truth."

"All pleasure in the world is a passing dream. It is better to will the good than to know the truth."

"I have taken pride in others, never in myself."

"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."

"I rejoiced in my progress, mourned my weaknesses, and commiserated the universal instability of human conduct."

"Books never pall on me. They discourse with us, they take counsel with us, and are united to us by a certain living chatty familiarity. And not only does each book inspire the sense that it belongs to its readers, but it also suggests the name of others, and one begets the desire of the other."

"Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure."

"Where are the numerous constructions erected by Agrippa, of which only the Pantheon remains? Where are the splendorous palaces of the emperors?"

"The greater I am, the greater shall be my efforts."

"If a hundred or a thousand people, all of the same age, of the same constitution and habits, were suddenly seized by the same illness, and one-half of them were to place themselves under the care of doctors, such as they are in our time, whilst the other half entrusted themselves to Nature and to their own discretion, I have not the slightest doubt that there would be more cases of death amongst the former, and more cases of recovery among the latter."

"How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance."

"Love is 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."

“I desire that death find me ready and writing, or if it please Christ, praying and in tears.”

"I have friends whose society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of all ages; distinguished in war, in council, and in letters; easy to live with, always at my command."

"Hitherto your eyes have been darkened and you have looked too much, yes, far too much, upon the things of earth. If these so much delight you what shall be your rapture when you lift your gaze to things eternal!"

"I looked back at the summit of the mountain, which seemed but a cubit high in comparison with the height of human contemplation, were in not too often merged in the corruptions of the earth."

"Often have I wondered with much curiosity as to our coming into this world and what will follow our departure."

We all have to live definitive life. The following quotes by Petrarch will make you see the true definition of your existence.

"And 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."

"It may be only glory that we seek here, but I persuade myself that, as long as we remain here, that is right. Another glory awaits us in heaven and he who reaches there will not wish even to think of earthly fame."

"A good death does honor to a whole life."

"Books have led some to learn and others to madness."

"For style beyond the genius never dares."

"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."

"Alack our life, so beautiful to see, With how much ease life loosest, in a day, What many years with pain and toil amassed!"

"While life is in your body, you have the rein of all thoughts in your hands."

"For though I am a body of this earth, my firm desire is born from the stars."

"Nothing mortal is enduring, and there is nothing sweet which does not presently end in bitterness."

“Where you are is of no moment, but only what you are doing there. It is not the place that ennobles you, but you the place, and this only by doing that which is great and noble.”

"Continued work and application form my soul's nourishment. So soon as I commenced to rest and relax I should cease to live."

"No one, it seems to me, can hope to equal Augustine. Who, nowadays, could hope to equal one who, in my judgment, was the greatest in an age fertile in great minds."

"My flowery and green age was passing away, and I feeling a chill in the fires had been wasting my heart, for I was drawing near the hillside above the grave."

"Life in itself is short enough, but the physicians with their art, know to their amusement, how to make it still shorter."

"How quick the old woe follows a little bliss!"

"Those spacious regions where our fancies roam,
Pain'd by the past, expecting ills to come,
In some dread moment, by the fates assigned,
Shall pass away, nor leave a rack behind;"

"And Time's revolving wheels shall lose at last
The speed that spins the future and the past:
And, sovereign of an undisputed throne,
Awful eternity shall reign alone."

"It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other."

"When the poet died his cat was put to death and mummified."

"Death had his grudge against me, and he got up in the way, like an armed robber, with a pike in his hand."

"I would have preferred to have been born in any other time than our own."

"Go, grieving rimes of mine, to that hard stone"

"Whereunder lies my darling, lies my dear, 
And cry to her to speak from heaven's sphere."

Peace of mind and peaceful co-existence among people are key to society. The below Petrarch quotes show how important peace is.

"An equal doom clipp'd Time's blest wings of peace."

"How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!"

"Who naught suspects are easily deceived."

"For virtue only finds eternal Fame."

"Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace."

"Reality is always the foe of famous names."

'Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace."

"Mere elegance of language can produce at best but an empty renown."

"You keep to your own ways and leave mine to me."

"Events appear sad, pleasant, or painful, not because they are so in reality, but because we believe them to be so and the light in which we look at them depends upon our judgment."

"Virtue is health, vice is sickness."

"I find no peace, and I am not at war, I fear and hope, and burn and I am ice; I fly above the heaven and lie on the earth, and I grasp nothing and embrace the world."

"Who over-refines his argument brings himself to grief"

“Hope is incredible to the slave of grief.”

"Where you are is of no moment, but only what you are doing there. It is not the place that ennobles you, but you the place, and this only by doing that which is great and noble."

"I had got this far, and was thinking of what to say next, and as my habit is, I was pricking the paper idly with my pen. And I thought how, between one dip of the pen and the next, time goes on, and I hurry, drive myself, and speed toward death."

"Often on earth the gentlest heart is fain To feed and banquet on another's woe."

"I saw the tracks of angels in the earth: the beauty of heaven walking by itself on the world."

"To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost everyone is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds."

"Suspicion is the cancer of friendship."

"Man has not a greater enemy than himself."

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

"A shortcut to riches is to subtract from our desires."

"Wanting is not enough, long and you attain it."

"There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen. Other pleasures fail us or wound us while they charm, but the pen we take up rejoicing and lay down with satisfaction, for it has the power to advantage not only its lord and master but many others as well, even though they be far away - sometimes, indeed, though they are not born for thousands of years to come."

"The time will come when every change shall cease,
This quick revolving wheel shall rest in peace:
No summer then shall glow, not winter freeze;
Nothing shall be to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now shall ever last."

"The end of doubt is the beginning of repose."

"All pleasure in the world is a passing dream."

"Great errors seldom originate but with men of great minds."

We all should embrace love and passion in our interpersonal dealings. The quotes below are Petrarch's sayings that depict love.

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

"What name to call thee by, O virgin fair, I know not, for thy looks are not of earth And more than mortal seems thy countenances"

"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."

"Love is the crowning grace of humanity."

"I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worst pursue."

"He loves but lightly who his love can tell."

"Books can warm the heart with friendly words and counsel, entering into a close relationship with us which is articulate and alive"

“Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.”

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

“Loving friendship is able to endure everything; it refuses no burden.”

"The aged love what is practical while impetuous youth longs only for what is dazzling."

"In my younger days I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair - my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames."

"I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did."

"From thought to thought, from mountain peak to the mountain. Love leads me on; for I can never still My trouble on the world's well-beaten ways."