He was an Italian poet and writer. He is the most famous writer known for writing The Divine Comedy.

Dante Alighieri

Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.

My course is set for an uncharted sea.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

Remember tonight... for it is the beginning of always.

In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.

The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain.

The devil is not as black as he is painted.

The wisest are the most annoyed at the loss of time.

He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it.

The path to paradise begins in hell.

He was an ancient Greek poet. He is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two greatest epic poems in Greek literature. He is the father of literature.

Homer

Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.

Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.

There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.

There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.

A man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time.

Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.

Even a fool learns something once it hits him.

Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.

For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother.

He was a political writer, a supporter of democratic socialism, and an author of successful novels against totalitarianism like "Animal Farm" and "1984".

George Orwell

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

He was an English playwright and poet, considered the most important English writer. He is known for such works as "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet."

William Shakespeare

Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.

He was an Irish writer. He was pivotal in developing 20th-century literature, nonconformist and critical of Irish society and the Catholic Church.

James Joyce

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

He was a Roman poet and author of the very famous Aeneid. He was the greatest poet of ancient Rome.

Virgil

Fortune sides with him who dares.

The descent into Hell is easy.

Let me rage before I die.

If I cannot move heaven, I will raise hell.

The gates of Hell are open night and day; smooth the descent and easy is the way.

No day shall erase you from the memory of time.

Do the gods light this fire in our hearts or does each man's mad desire become his god?

Through pain I've learned to comfort suffering men.

Trust one who has gone through it.

They can because they think they can.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.

A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.

It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.

The formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.

The soul is healed by being with children.

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

Realists do not fear the results of their study.

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.

Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.

I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.

It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.

People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human.

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.

But how could you live and have no story to tell?

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

The world says: "You have needs, satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.

To love someone means to see them as God intended them.

Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.

I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living.

Right or wrong, it's very pleasant to break something from time to time.

The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.

Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering...

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.

Beauty will save the world.

It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.

You can be sincere and still be stupid.

Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.

Aesop

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth.

Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.

After all is said and done, more is said than done.

Every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.

It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.

United we stand, divided we fall.

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.

Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.

Adventure is worthwhile.

Be content with your lot; one cannot be first in everything.

The level of our success is limited only by our imagination and no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.

A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.

Please all, and you will please none.

Slow but steady wins the race.

We should look to the mind, and not to the outward appearance.

The little reed, bending to the force of the wind, soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over.

The smaller the mind the greater the conceit.

We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction.

Appearances are often deceiving.

He that is discontented in one place will seldom be happy in another.

Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.

Persuasion is often more effectual than force.

Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Injuries may be forgiven, but not forgotten.

Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing.

Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth - don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.

Example is the best precept.

Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth.

It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow.

Put your shoulder to the wheel.

A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.

Beware that you do not lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.

It is with our passions as it is with fire and water, they are good servants, but bad masters.

If you allow men to use you for your own purposes, they will use you for theirs.

Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.

The unhappy derive comfort from the misfortunes of others.

Self-conceit may lead to self destruction.

The gods help them that help themselves.

People often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.

Our insignificance is often the cause of our safety.

The injuries we do and those we suffer are seldom weighed in the same scales.

Plodding wins the race.

It is in vain to expect our prayers to be heard, if we do not strive as well as pray.

Affairs are easier of entrance than of exit; and it is but common prudence to see our way out before we venture in.

Betray a friend, and you'll often find you have ruined yourself.

Fine clothes may disguise, but silly words will disclose a fool.

If you choose bad companions, no one will believe that you are anything but bad yourself.

A liar will not be believed even when he speaks the truth.

Those who cry the loudest are not always the ones who are hurt the most.

It is easy to be brave at a safe distance.

The smaller the mind, the greater the conceit.

United we stand; divided we fall.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

No one believes a liar even when he tells the truth.

Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear.

The injury we do and the one we suffer are not weighed in the same scales.

Adversity tests the sincerity of friends.

Once a wolf, always a wolf.

In trying to please all, he had pleased none.

Give assistance, not advice, in a crisis.

Little by little does the trick.

Those who suffer most cry out the least.

Edgar Allan Poe

We loved with a love that was more than love.

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

Lord, help my poor soul.

Stupidity is a talent for misconception.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.

To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.

I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'

The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.

The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.

It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.

The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

Studying quotes to truly understand their meaning

Dante Alighieri

Homer

George Orwell

William Shakespeare

James Joyce

Virgil

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Aesop

Edgar Allan Poe

Emily Dickinson

Miguel De Cervantes

Robert Frost

Ernest Hemingway

Charles Dickens

Stephen King

Leo Tolstoy

Franz Kafka

Jane Austen

Sophocles

Jack Kornfield

Russell Brunson

Ian Watson

Victor Hugo

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