Paradiso Quotes

“Love, that moves the sun and the other stars”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“ma gia volgena il mio disio e'l velle
si come rota ch'igualmente e mossa,
l'amor che move: i sole e l'altre stelle
...as a wheel turns smoothtly, free from jars, my will and my desire were turned by love, The love that moves the sun and the other stars.”
― Dante, Paradiso

“The Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“As one who sees in dreams and wakes to find the emotional impression of his vision still powerful while its parts fade from his mind - Just such am I, having lost nearly all the vision itself, while in my heart I feel the sweetness of it yet distill and fall.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“Fate's arrow, when expected, travels slow.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“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.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“all things created have an order in themselves, and this begets the form that lets the universe resemble God.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“O grace abounding and allowing me to dare
to fix my gaze on the Eternal Light,
so deep my vision was consumed in it!

I saw how it contains within its depths
all things bound in a single book by love
of which creation is the scattered leaves:

how substance, accident, and their relation
were fused in such a way that what I now
describe is but a glimmer of that Light.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“From a little spark may burst a flame.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“If you, free as you are of every weight
had stayed below, then that would be as strange
as living flame on earth remaining still."

And then she turned her gaze up toward the heavens.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“All Being within this order, by the laws
of its own nature is impelled to find
its proper station round its Primal Cause.

Thus every nature moves across the tide
of the great sea of being to its own port,
each with its given instinct as its guide.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“O you, who in some pretty boat,
Eager to listen, have been following
Behind my ship, that singing sails along

Turn back to look again upon your own shores;
Tempt not the deep, lest unawares,
In losing me, you yourselves might be lost.

The sea I sail has never yet been passed;
Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo,
And Muses nine point out to me the Bears.

You other few who have neck uplifted
Betimes to the bread of angels upon Which one lives and does not grow sated,

Well may you launch your vessel
Upon the deep sea.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“Lady, you who are so great, so powerful,
that who seeks grace without recourse to you
would have his wish fly upward without wings.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“God's greatest gift to man
In all the bounty He was moved to make
Throughout creation-the one gift the most
Close to his goodness and the one He calls
Most precious-is free will.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“O virgin mother, daughter of thy Son,
humble beyond all creatures and more exalted;
predestined turning point of God's intention;

Thy merit so ennobled human nature
that its divine Creator did not scorn
to make Himself the creature of His creature.

The Love that was rekindled in Thy womb
sends for the warmth of the eternal peace
within whose ray this flower has come to bloom.

Here to us, thou art the noon and scope
of Love revealed; and among mortal men,
the living fountain of eternal hope.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“While the everlasting pleasure, that did full On Beatrice shine, with second view From her fair countenance my gladden'd soul Contented; vanquishing me with a beam Of her soft smile, she spake: "Turn thee, and list. These eyes are not thy only Paradise.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Vol. 3: Paradise

“Great fire can follow a small spark: there may be better voices after me to pray to Cyrrha's god for aid - that he may answer.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“God is the love that moves the sun and stars.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“Here powers failed my high imagination:
But by now my desire and will were turned,
Like a balanced wheel rotated evenly,
By the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“And what will bow your shoulders down
will be the vicious and worthless company
with whom you will fall into this abyss.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“Whoso laments, that we must doff this garb
Of frail mortality, thenceforth to live
Immortally above, he hath not seen
The sweet refreshing, of that heav’nly shower.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“Behave like men, and not like witless sheep...”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“Open thy mind; take in what I explain and keep it there; because to understand is not to know, if thou dost not retain...”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“the Love that moves the sun and all the other stars.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“Well do I see how the Eternal Ray, which, once seen, kindles love forevermore, already shines on you. If on your way some other thing seduce your love, my brother, it can only be a trace, misunderstood, of this, which you see shining through the other.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Paradiso

“Christians, be steadier in what you do, not blown like feathers at the wind's discretion, nor think that every water cleanses you...”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“These are the radiancies of the perfected vision that sees the good and step by step moves nearer what it sees.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Paradiso

“...Because the sacred fire that lights all nature liveliest of all in its own image glows. All these prerogatives the human creature possesses, and if one of them should fail, he must diminish from his noble stature. Sin only can disenfranchise him, and veil his likeness to the Highest Good; whereby the light in him is lessened and grows pale. Ne'er can he win back dignities so high till the void made by guilt be all filled in with just amends paid for by illicit joy. Now, when your nature as a whole did sin in its first root, it lost these great awards, and lost the Eden of its origin; nor might they be recovered afterwards by any means, as if thou search thou'lt see, except by crossing one of these two fords; either must God, of his sole courtesy, remit, or man must pay with all that's his, the debt of sin in its entirety. Within the Eternal Counsel's deep abyss rivet thine eye, and with a heed as good as thou canst give me, do thou follow this. Man from his finite assets never could make satisfaction; ne'er could he abase him so low, obey thereafter all he would, as he'd by disobedience sought to raise him; and for this cause man might not pay his due himself, nor from the debtor's roll erase him. Needs then must God, by his own ways, renew man's proper life, and reinstate him so; his ways I say - by one, or both of two. And since the doer's actions ever show more gracious as the style of them makes plain the goodness of the heart from which they flow, that most high Goodness which is God was fain - even God, whose impress Heaven and earth display - by all His ways to lift you up again; nor, between final night and primal day, was e'er proceeding so majestical and high, nor shall not be, by either way; for God's self-giving, which made possible that man should raise himself, showed more largesse than if by naked power He'd cancelled all; and every other means would have been less than justice, if it had not pleased God's Son to be humiliate in fleshliness.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“Open your mind to what I shall explain, then close around it, for it is no learning to understand what one does not retain.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Paradiso

“Thus into the sempiternal justice the sight conferred in your world penetrates only as far as the eye does into the sea, for though close to shore you may see the bottom, on the open sea you cannot, and nonetheless it is there, but hidden by being deep.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradise