Petrarch
Famous Italian poet, scholar, and humanist Francesco Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch, collected love lyrics in
Canzoniere
.
People often call Petrarch the earliest Renaissance "father of humanism". Based on Petrarch's works, and to a lesser extent those of Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio, Pietro Bembo in the 16th century created the model for the modern Italian language, which the Accademia della Crusca later endorsed. People credit Petrarch with developing the sonnet. They admired and imitated his sonnets, a model for lyrical poems throughout Europe during the Renaissance. Petrarch called the Middle Ages the Dark Ages.
“Yet have I oft been beaten in the field, And sometimes hurt," said I, "but scorn'd to yield." He smiled and said: "Alas! thou dost not see, My son, how great a flame's prepared for thee.”
Petrarch
“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.”
Petrarch
“Shame is the fruit of my vanities, and remorse, and the clearest knowledge of how the world's delight is a brief dream.”
Petrarch
“. . . The senses reign, and reason now is dead;from one pleasing desire comes another.Virtue, honor, beauty, gracious bearing,sweet words have caught me in her lovely branchesin which my heart is tenderly entangled.In thirteen twenty-seven, and preciselyat the first hour of the sixth of AprilI entered the labyrinth, and I see no way out.”
Petrarch
“Aurum, argentum, gemmae, purpurea vestis, marmorea domus, cultus ager, pietae tabulae, phaleratus sonipes, caeteraque id genus mutam habent et superficiariam voluptatem: libri medullitus delectant, colloquuntur, consulunt, et viva quadam nobis atque arguta familiaritate junguntur.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.”
Petrarch
“Books have led some to learning and others to madness.”
Petrarch
“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.”
Petrarch
“I ate in the morning what I would digest in the evening; I swallowed as a boy what I would ruminate upon as an older man. I have thoroughly absorbed these writings, implanting them not only in my memory but in my marrow. (Quoted by Josh Foer in Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything)”
Petrarch
“To be able to say how much love, is love but little.”
Petrarch
“I wish to go beyond the fire that burns me.”
Petrarch
“Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.”
Petrarch
“Neither exhortations to virtue nor the argument of approaching death should divert us from literature; for in a good mind it excites the love of virtue, and dissipates, or at least diminishes, the fear of death.”
Petrarch
“She closed her eyes; and in the sweet slumber lyingher spirit tiptoed from its lodging place.It's folly to shrink in fear, if this is dying;for death looked lovely in her face.”
Petrarch