C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Dante
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.
And oft a retrospect delights the mind.
Art, as far as it has ability, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God’s grandchild.
As fall the light autumnal leaves, one still the other following, till the bough strews all its honors.
Be steadfast as a tower, that doth not bend its stately summit to the tempest’s shock.
But if, as morning rises, dreams are true.
Come, follow me, and leave the world to its babblings.
Conscience, that boon companion who sets a man free under the strong breastplate of innocence, that bids him on and fear not.
Deed done is well begun.
Doubting charms me not less than knowledge.
Fame is not won on downy plumes nor under canopies; the man who consumes his days without obtaining it leaves such mark of himself on earth as smoke in air or foam on water.
From little spark may burst a mighty flame.
Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from the eternal.
I love sometimes to doubt, as well as know.
My soul tasted that heavenly food, which gives new appetite while it satiates.
No greater grief than to remember days of joy when misery is at hand.
O foolish anxiety of wretched man, how inconclusive are the arguments which make thee beat thy wings below!
The customs and fashions of men change like leaves on the bough, some of which go and others come.
The splendors that belong unto the fame of earth are but a wind, that in the same direction lasts not long.
The truth thy speech doth show, within my heart reproves the swelling pride.
The wisest are the most annoyed at the loss of time.
Thou shalt know by experience how salt the savor is of other’s bread, and how sad a path it is to climb and descend another’s stairs.
Three sparks—pride, envy, and avarice—have been kindled in all hearts.
Your fame is as the grass, whose hue comes and goes, and His might withers it by whose power it sprang from the lap of the earth.