“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.”

“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.”

“Here pity only lives when it is dead - Virgil”

“those cries rose from among the twisted rootsthrough which the spirits of the damned were slinkingto hide from us. Therefore my Master said:'If you break off a twig, what you will learnwill drive what you are thinking from your head.'Puzzled, I raised my hand a bit and slowlybroke off a branchlet from an enormous thorn:and the great trunk of it cried: 'Why do you break me?'And after blood had darkened all the bowlof the wound, it cried again: 'Why do you tear me?Is there no pity left in any soul?Men we were, and now we are changed to sticks;well might your hand have been more mercifulwere we no more than souls of lice and ticks.'As a green branch with one end all aflamewill hiss and sputter sap out of the otheras the air escapes- so from that trunk there camewords and blood together, gout by gout.Startled, I dropped the branch that I was holdingand stood transfixed by fear,...”

“As at those words did I myself become;And all my love was so absorbed in Him,That in oblivion Beatrice was eclipsed.”

“In each fire there is a spirit; Each one is wrapped in what is burning him.”

“So that the Universe felt love,by which, as somebelieve,the world has many times been turned to chaos.And at that moment this ancient rock,here and elsewhere, fell broken into pieces.”