Through me is the way to the city of woe. Through me is the way to sorrow eternal. Through me is the way to the lost below. Justice moved my architect supernal. I was constructed...

Mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde

A mighty flame followeth a tiny spark.

Here sighs and cries and shrieks of lamentation echoed throughout the starless air of Hell;at first these sounds resounding made me weep:tongues confused, a language strained in anguishwith cadences of anger, shrill outcriesand raucous groans...

When you are nearer, you will understand how much your eyesight is deceived by distance. Therefore, push yourself a little harder.

Nature is the art of God.

If you, free as you are of every weighthad stayed below, then that would be as strangeas living flame on earth remaining still.”And then she turned her gaze up toward the heavens.

And he began, “What chance or destinyhas brought you here before your final day?And who is he who leads your pilgrimage?””Up there in life beneath the quiet starsI lost my way,” I answered, “in a...

Thy soul is by vile fear assailed

All hope abandon, ye who enter here!

I am the way into the city of woe,I am the way into eternal pain,I am the way to go among the lost.Justice caused my high architect to move,Divine omnipotence created me,The highest wisdom, and...

The weapons of divine justice are blunted by the confession and sorrow of the offender.

I love to doubt as well as know.

The path to paradise begins in hell.

Pape Satan, Pape Satan, Aleppe!

A mighty flame follows a tiny spark.

Follow your own star!

The mind which is created quick to love, is responsive to everything that is pleasing, soon as by pleasure it is awakened into activity. Your apprehensive faculty draws an impression from a real object, and...

This is Nimrod, because of whose vile plan the world no longer speaks a single tongue.

You shall find out how salt is the taste of another man’s bread, and how hard is the way up and down another man’s stairs.

Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground

There is no greater sorrowthan thinking back upon a happy timein misery–

Those ancients who in poetry presented the golden age, who sang its happy state,perhaps, in their Parnassus, dreamt this place. Here, mankind’s root was innocent; and herewere every fruit and never-ending spring; these streams–the nectar...

Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

And all the while one spirit uttered this,The other one did weep so, that, for pity,I swooned away as if I had been dying,And fell, even as a dead body falls.